2011 MBA 11" Lion or Mountain Lion?

Just stick with it, upgrade to the next version when it's available.

barebackbadger8 said:

Now with the battery issues (user usage or apple problem)

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What battery issue? I'm on ML with my 2011 Air and also upgraded from Apple's up to date program. I don't see any difference between Lion and ML ... the battery's always been quick to drain compared to our other Macs. I get around 3 hours surfing the web, streaming videos on half brightness.

ML is a much better OS than Lion was imho.
never had the battery issues you mention on my last Air

barebackbadger8 said:

I get about 3 hours battery just surfing the web, which i think is awful.
My old 13" c2d mbp i used to easily get 5-6hours doing the exact same (lion)
Now i know the mba as a smaller battery etc but something aint right!
Hardly got anything of any note on my mba, might just install lion again and see if that helps... Pitty i couldnt put SL on it. Now that was a top OS

Click to expand...

out of interest, did you do an erase and clean install of ML or just go over the top of Lion?

you can use this from Apple for a recovery disc usb stick
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

and this to make the actual startup (bootable) ML usb stick
http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/

both very handy to have on hand

barebackbadger8 said:

I get about 3 hours battery just surfing the web, which i think is awful.
My old 13" c2d mbp i used to easily get 5-6hours doing the exact same (lion)
Now i know the mba as a smaller battery etc but something aint right!
Hardly got anything of any note on my mba, might just install lion again and see if that helps... Pitty i couldnt put SL on it. Now that was a top OS

Click to expand...

13" C2D MBP will undoubtedly see much better battery life. FWIW, I have replaced the battery of the 13" C2D MBP and it probably weighs as much and has the same volume as the entire MBA does. So yes, you will see better life with the MBP than MBA

As someone else mentioned, consider doing a fresh install. Fresh install will always perform better than an upgrade from an old install. Not sure if this is causing your battery issue a whole lot but I always recommend that over the upgrades, which tend to leave the machine in a not-very-performant state.

If you got it from the App store you may download it again. There is no reason you should be getting poor performance on your MBA. You should be looking into Activity Monitor and an awesome app called coconut battery as it checks the health of your battery.

Mountain Lion is better than Lion ever was. Lion was the WORST OS Apple has ever produced and was the most buggy software I've ever dealt with. I miss the good ole days of Snow Leopard. Though now my MBA on Mountain Lion the only issue I have is a slow shut down compared to what it used to be. I've spammed Apple to fix it.

kage207 said:

Mountain Lion is better than Lion ever was. Lion was the WORST OS Apple has ever produced and was the most buggy software I've ever dealt with. I miss the good ole days of Snow Leopard. Though now my MBA on Mountain Lion the only issue I have is a slow shut down compared to what it used to be. I've spammed Apple to fix it.

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I agree - I would either stick with SL or jump to ML. Lion was slow (at least it felt slow) and battery life stunk.

The "battery issue" was resolved with the ML software update. 6-7 hours is what I see regularly with my ML 13". My L 11" shows a consistent 5 hours.

barebackbadger8 said:

I get about 3 hours battery just surfing the web, which i think is awful.
My old 13" c2d mbp i used to easily get 5-6hours doing the exact same (lion)
Now i know the mba as a smaller battery etc but something aint right!
Hardly got anything of any note on my mba, might just install lion again and see if that helps... Pitty i couldnt put SL on it. Now that was a top OS

Click to expand...

I have the same MBA 11 you do and I'm running Lion. Have you seen any improvement since you first installed Mt. Lion? I had the same concerns you did (battery life, wifi) which is why I haven't upgraded yet.

Just wondering if after a few days you still notice battery life decline. Thanks!

I get almost 5 hours of wifi surfing on my 2010 11" Air with 10.8.2 @ half brightness

Ignore.