Who's still rocking their late 2010 MBA?

FuNGi said:

Yes, well, if you're only checking email, creating Word documents, and reading online news I suspect you would not notice any differences...

Click to expand...

Actually, depending on how much content/advertising there is on a web page, I found that scrolling around the page on my 2010 MBA was not a great experience. A lot of jumping around and stuttering. On the 2014, every web page scrolls silky smooth.

Granted, that doesn't make the content different or better, but there is a difference.

My 2010 13" 4GB is still going strong - not noticeably slower for day to day browsing editing and surfing than the i5 iMac I use at work. Obviously it's slower for movie editing but I can still do RAW editing in photoshop without it being noticeably slower.

Still using a 2010 13" 4MB/256GB 2.1GHz/C2D MBA running Snow Leopard... have 592 cycles on the battery and 92% battery health. Bought it as a refurb with 3 cycles on the battery, and still running like a champ. I use it for general web browsing and email, and sometimes run Win/VMware. It's a bit slow resuming VMware out of standby, but once it's running, no performance issues with Windows. The main thing this platform showed us is how SSD's increase system speed and the CPU is no longer the bottleneck, unless one is transcoding video or music. The only thing I wish it had is a TB port.

I'll keep it as long as it runs, thinking about buying a 15" rMBP when the mid-2014 refurbs are available.

What is the best OS for the late 2010?

I have 4gb ram , 11", core2duo 1.6 and 128gb disc.
I dont notice any difference between all those OS so I dont care which of them I run, but I would like to run the OS that gives best batterytime and "works" best with 2010 air.

Im on mavericks now, but I see other people in this thread are running Snow Leopard etc.

If im gonna do a clean install, what should i install?
any recommandations?

EsspeN said:

What is the best OS for the late 2010?

I have 4gb ram , 11", core2duo 1.6 and 128gb disc.
I dont notice any difference between all those OS so I dont care which of them I run, but I would like to run the OS that gives best batterytime and "works" best with 2010 air.

Im on mavericks now, but I see other people in this thread are running Snow Leopard etc.

If im gonna do a clean install, what should i install?
any recommandations?

Click to expand...

I haven't noticed that Mavericks is any worse (or slower) than any other OS I've had installed on my laptop (up until recently a 2010). If anything, because of memory compression, it should run somewhat better/faster on all hardware.

EsspeN said:

What is the best OS for the late 2010?

I have 4gb ram , 11", core2duo 1.6 and 128gb disc.
I dont notice any difference between all those OS so I dont care which of them I run, but I would like to run the OS that gives best batterytime and "works" best with 2010 air.

Im on mavericks now, but I see other people in this thread are running Snow Leopard etc.

If im gonna do a clean install, what should i install?
any recommandations?

Click to expand...

I second motrek's statement. Mavericks runs perfectly fine and isn't really noticeably slower than Snow Leopard on these machines, and given the massive amount of tweaking Apple did to get battery life up with Mavericks you'll probably see a decrease in battery life if you drop down to Snow Leopard, and that's not even mentioning the lack of support you'll be letting yourself in for. I'm running Yosemite on my 13" 2.13GHz w/ 4GB RAM and I haven't noticed it to be any slower than Mavericks either, so when it's released (probably tomorrow) I'd recommend updating again.

Thanks for your input!

Ill go for Yosemite as well =)
How do i do a clean install on AiR? Do i download it from applestore and just run it from my disk and I can still do a "clean" install? OR do i have to put it on uSB stick or something?

still have my 2010 1.6Ghz, 128GB, 4GB 11" macbook air. I have tried to convince myself to upgrade it but never found a reason too. Its running the current public beta just fine.

Mavericks works well here too. The only thing I'll say is that flash video in Chrome makes it run rather hot... Mainly a reason to avoid doing just that but occasionally its unavoidable. Must try out the other browsers again to see if they're any better

Still using my 11" late 2010 model but I'm just waiting for Apple to update the Air line with the new Broadwell CPUs. I can live with it still but it is not really funny to use anymore. I want a faster CPU/GPU and I want a lot more run time

FuNGi said:

My 13"/4GB/480GB late 2010 MBA is still great for most things that I do. I use it predominately at home, coffee shops, and while traveling for word processing, as a music player, and for movies and web surfing on the couch (I sold my iPad after 3 months as it was redundant).

I also have a late 2013 15" rMBP (2.3/16/512) I use for work (research scientist) so you can guess I wince looking at the Air's screen but, apart from photo editing, don't notice big differences in it's performance.

I'm curious who out there is still rocking this first iteration of the modern MBA design, what your specs are, what you use if for, and how it's holding up. Do you yearn for something more?

Click to expand...

My sister's 2010 was rocking until I recently sold it to replace it with my old 2011 and get myself a new unit. I'm probably doing that again with a 2014 revision, not much of an improvement but for 100€ it's still worth it.

Back to your question, that very same Air is still running Mavericks quite well with just 2 GB RAM and stock Toshiba 128 GB SSD.

I would go for Mavericks instead of Yosemite. I feel that Mavericks is the only OS which has successfully integrated all the iOS features from Lion and Mountain Lion without compromising its stability or performance.

My Son uses my old macBook Air original with 64Gb daily. i replaced the battery a couple of years ago and it still runs great.