Agreed, still not a definite answer on battery and heat comparison.
Takes a special person to have access to both an 11" i5 and i7 ...
Maybe an Apple employee or vendor or some lucky bugger who bought both to try them out
Well... if we get someone with an i7... I have an i5 (and I'm sure many others have an i5)...
So why don't we just get a couple willing people for each end (2x i5 11-inch users, and 2x i7 11-inch users), and put together a 60 minute test. Each person should be doing identical things with identical brightness, and identical colour/contrast calibrations... identical everything down to the programs, screen, wireless distance, bluetooth on/off, etc, etc.
Here would be a good test (with caffeine running):
To determine if the processor is any different in battery life, the screen should be turned down to 0% brightness. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and anything else that could skew the results should be turned off. Load up a high-def video, a couple of background programs, and something else... so that the processor is spiking up and down (not full blast but back and forth as if it were moderate to intense usage), and do this for 60 minutes. Record the % lost in the 60 minutes.
Then for another 60 minute test, do low-end stuff. Just run a word processor program in the background, with iCal up, and a couple of other very simple programs that would be possibly used when doing word processing. Make the processor run between 0% and 10%. Record the % lost.
Then for another 60 minute test, do a full-blast test. Keep track of the maximum heat. Run a high-def video, and run a game of some sort (leave it running and on the game); some sort of free game... I don't know. Something somewhat demanding. Keep the processor at 80-100% always.
Between these three tests we'd have our answer:
- Max temperature between the two
- Battery life between the two in medium usage, low-end usage, and high usage
This would give us probably the best idea of which processor is better for battery life since it would cut out the screen altogether (turning off the backlight really would cut out its power consumption and get us a better look at just the processors going at it).