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Orren

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 10, 2013
5
0
Hi,

I've been looking at getting the Surface Pro 2 due to its light weight and long battery life. I'm very close to getting one but I've just been looking at the competition as well. This Macbook air is a little more costly but has a nice keyboard and better GPU. This is the last one I'm going to consider before I buy the Pro 2.

My question is, in Windows 7/8 what kind of battery life could I expect under full load gaming (Skyrim etc.)? As far as boot camp goes, the air should run windows as well as any other ultrabook yes?

Thanks for any replies.
 

Robyr

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2010
226
0
Hi,

I've been looking at getting the Surface Pro 2 due to its light weight and long battery life. I'm very close to getting one but I've just been looking at the competition as well. This Macbook air is a little more costly but has a nice keyboard and better GPU. This is the last one I'm going to consider before I buy the Pro 2.

My question is, in Windows 7/8 what kind of battery life could I expect under full load gaming (Skyrim etc.)? As far as boot camp goes, the air should run windows as well as any other ultrabook yes?

Thanks for any replies.

#1, Gaming on the Surface wlll SUCK. Not only that, but MS is claiming the battery life because of Haswell. Its not going to be that impressive.

#2. My 2013 11" gamed for about 5-6 hours with full brightness. This was playing a marathon session of Team Fortress 2.
 

Orren

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 10, 2013
5
0
The battery life seems amazing then, this is what I was hoping for, thanks for the replies guys!
 

cbautis2

macrumors 6502a
Aug 17, 2013
894
1,106
The only thing that's good with SP2 is the IPS screen and 1080p. But I still think the screen estate of MBA 13 outweighs that nice SP2 screen, and the larger the screen the better for gaming like in your case.
 

Orren

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 10, 2013
5
0
The only thing that's good with SP2 is the IPS screen and 1080p. But I still think the screen estate of MBA 13 outweighs that nice SP2 screen, and the larger the screen the better for gaming like in your case.

That combined with the battery life is exactly why this choice is so hard for me.

One more question, as far as Windows 7/8 boot camp goes (never done it before) sleep and wake times would be pretty much instant right? I want to be able to pull the thing out of my bag and have it working within seconds. Does anyone ever run in to problems using 7/8 on the Air?
 

Robyr

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2010
226
0
That combined with the battery life is exactly why this choice is so hard for me.

One more question, as far as Windows 7/8 boot camp goes (never done it before) sleep and wake times would be pretty much instant right? I want to be able to pull the thing out of my bag and have it working within seconds. Does anyone ever run in to problems using 7/8 on the Air?

Just buy a PC, honestly. If you are going to use it 100% in Windows anyway, you wont see the real shining gems of the Mac platform, and you will not get the battery life benefits.

Besides, if you are so stuck on gaming and all this jazz, just get something made to do it. You are really torturing the shelf life of this thread going around in circles.
 

Orren

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 10, 2013
5
0
Just buy a PC, honestly. If you are going to use it 100% in Windows anyway, you wont see the real shining gems of the Mac platform, and you will not get the battery life benefits.

Besides, if you are so stuck on gaming and all this jazz, just get something made to do it. You are really torturing the shelf life of this thread going around in circles.

There is no PC that offers this hardware for the price. I could get a windows notebook but not many (If any?) have the HD5000 with battery life that is this good. I looked at competitors such as the Sony Viao Pro and it didn't seem to offer the same gaming performance at all. Otherwise of course I'd just get a Windows machine.

I don't see how I'm going round in circles if I'm asking a question that no one has answered for me...
 

Robyr

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2010
226
0
There is no PC that offers this hardware for the price. I could get a windows notebook but not many (If any?) have the HD5000 with battery life that is this good. I looked at competitors such as the Sony Viao Pro and it didn't seem to offer the same gaming performance at all. Otherwise of course I'd just get a Windows machine.

I don't see how I'm going round in circles if I'm asking a question that no one has answered for me...

Thats the thing, in Windows, you will not see this amazing battery life. It will be closer to 5-6 hours.

Also, for instance, you could get something like: http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9333/pd the XPS 13. Haswell, though it's GT1 (HD4400), and you still get an excellent piece of kit for the same cost or less, on top of drivers optimized for Windows and power controls for battery life.

The difference will be absolutely minute.
 

Mackan

macrumors 65816
Sep 16, 2007
1,421
91
Thats the thing, in Windows, you will not see this amazing battery life. It will be closer to 5-6 hours.

Also, for instance, you could get something like: http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9333/pd the XPS 13. Haswell, though it's GT1 (HD4400), and you still get an excellent piece of kit for the same cost or less, on top of drivers optimized for Windows and power controls for battery life.

The difference will be absolutely minute.

Drivers optimised for Windows? There's nothing optimised about drivers + OEM + Windows, in my opinion. It's plagued by the same problem year after year, because it's the same engineers working on it year after year, and they learn nothing. Bad wifi, terrible trackpad, badly implemented fan behaviour, to name a few...
 

Robyr

macrumors regular
Feb 21, 2010
226
0
Drivers optimised for Windows? There's nothing optimised about drivers + OEM + Windows, in my opinion. It's plagued by the same problem year after year, because it's the same engineers working on it year after year, and they learn nothing. Bad wifi, terrible trackpad, badly implemented fan behaviour, to name a few...

Yes, the designs of some PCs are pretty bad, but I can assure you the XPS13 is a solid, very well integrated device. I have owned one, in addition to multiple Airs.

Some of the Sony devices coming out are also quite enticing, but if I were to buy a PC today, I would have an XPS13. They also are 100% supported and certified in Ubuntu, in fact it is sold as a Developer Edition laptop as such.
 

Orren

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 10, 2013
5
0
Thats the thing, in Windows, you will not see this amazing battery life. It will be closer to 5-6 hours.

Also, for instance, you could get something like: http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-13-9333/pd the XPS 13. Haswell, though it's GT1 (HD4400), and you still get an excellent piece of kit for the same cost or less, on top of drivers optimized for Windows and power controls for battery life.

The difference will be absolutely minute.

The difference seems to be about 10%. Maybe you're right, my main reason for starting this thread was I can get a reasonable discount on the Macbook Air so I had to consider it as well as the Surface Pro 2 because for me, the MBA 13" is cheaper than the SP2 (If you include SP2+type cover cost). So for less I was getting a bigger screen with a good keyboard and touchpad + faster GPU. The Dell you linked is around £150 ($250) more for me.
 
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