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It is incredibly frustrating to see people on this thread saying they've heard the i7 runs hot and ruins battery life. ONLY Curtoise has experiences these issues. I have not read about ANYONE else having the same experience.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, Curtoise, but I and a couple other have suggested your i7 unit sounds defective. But Curtoise ignores this suggestion every time it's mentioned.

It make absolutely no sense that an i5 could import 4000 photos with no problems and the i7 would burn up on 60. Just think about that for a moment. It makes no logical sense.

Agreed, the performance difference just doesn't make sense if both machines are working as prescribed. If

the i7 is working properly with no issues then apple could have an influx of returned units :eek:
 
I've messed with machines in the Apple Store with 4GB and they run great. .


I've used both 4Gb and 8Gb MBA machines in a development environment and while using VMware and I can tell you that the speed difference between the 4 and 8 is noticeable and substantial - especially in the VM environments.

If you're just doing email and browsing then 4GB is fine. For any real work the 8GB is a wise choice.
 
Right on the money, if the 2014 Macbook Air is going to be totally redesigned and retina, beautiful etc you are going to want to upgrade to that one and it will cost you just a couple hundred bucks, if not you keep this one for another year and you will be very good too.

I've installed Mavericks on the base model and considering that it is a Developer Preview it runs flawlessly on the base model.

I see your point but I have a 15 " retina pro with 16 gb. I run both osx and windows 7 all day via parallels with several windows program's open and safari, mail,iMessage, twitter, preview open as well. When I look at the activity monitor 13gb is used up and I have occasional page outs. I have ordered an 11 inch with 8gb because I feel that if I need to use it as a back up for the retina at any point the 8gb will come in handy and it only costs £68 to upgrade in the education store in the uk. It's just the wait that's a killer.
 
I, for one, appreciate curtoise's postings.


I currently have a 2012 11" i7 8gb and I hook up to my Thunderbolt display and I can attest that it KILLS battery life. I usually make sure I'm plugged in to the wall when I hook up to it. Off the Thunderbolt I usually get about 5hrs out of the machine doing lite work(I'm a software engineer so web browsing and text editing mostly).

If Curtoise is using it in clamshell mode, we should remember that the Macbook Airs vent through the keyboard which might explain the fans kicking on more often. My keyboard gets very hot when I'm charging, on Thunderbolt, and watching a youtube video... even when it's open.



Perhaps Musika will be more empirical and standardized in his testing?


I'd like to see a 100% battery i5 and i7 turned on and the same video on loop until they both die. What we want to quantify is the exact percentage of how much faster the i7 drains.


As of this post, if you believe Curtoise's machine and findings are an outlier, signes point to buying the new i7 8gb.

If you believe Curtoise's findings are indicative of all the new machines then signs point to buying a i5 8gb.


What's really going to blow your minds with confusion is when we remember that 8gb RAM uses more power than 4gb... the RAM has to keep constant voltage in those chips.

I believe the same goes for hard drives 512gb vs 128gb... Hahaha
 
I, for one, appreciate curtoise's postings.


I currently have a 2012 11" i7 8gb and I hook up to my Thunderbolt display and I can attest that it KILLS battery life. I usually make sure I'm plugged in to the wall when I hook up to it. Off the Thunderbolt I usually get about 5hrs out of the machine doing lite work(I'm a software engineer so web browsing and text editing mostly).

If Curtoise is using it in clamshell mode, we should remember that the Macbook Airs vent through the keyboard which might explain the fans kicking on more often. My keyboard gets very hot when I'm charging, on Thunderbolt, and watching a youtube video... even when it's open.



Perhaps Musika will be more empirical and standardized in his testing?


I'd like to see a 100% battery i5 and i7 turned on and the same video on loop until they both die. What we want to quantify is the exact percentage of how much faster the i7 drains.


As of this post, if you believe Curtoise's machine and findings are an outlier, signes point to buying the new i7 8gb.

If you believe Curtoise's findings are indicative of all the new machines then signs point to buying a i5 8gb.


What's really going to blow your minds with confusion is when we remember that 8gb RAM uses more power than 4gb... the RAM has to keep constant voltage in those chips.

I believe the same goes for hard drives 512gb vs 128gb... Hahaha

That's correct, more processor and more ram need more power.

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Happy testing guys, I've enjoyed this past week sharing my experience and very happy with my purchase and I have now a new Time Capsule and still saved $300+ from my inital purchased.

I'm stocked! :)
 
My i7/8GB arrived about 30 minutes ago. Right out of the box, I did just a little bit of light Safari browsing of the forums. Nothing more, really.

The center of the keyboard is warm – not super hot*– just a little bit warm.

I know that the battery estimates mean nothing, especially in the beginning of use, but when I took it out of the box, it estimated "7:45" with a battery percentage of 88%. I browsed very lightly for about 10 minutes, the percentage dropped to 81% with an estimation of "3:40".

Now I'm letting it charge up to 100% for the first time and I'll take it from there when it's ready. Nothing conclusive yet.
 
My i7/8GB arrived about 30 minutes ago. Right out of the box, I did just a little bit of light Safari browsing of the forums. Nothing more, really.

The center of the keyboard is warm – not super hot*– just a little bit warm.

I know that the battery estimates mean nothing, especially in the beginning of use, but when I took it out of the box, it estimated "7:45" with a battery percentage of 88%. I browsed very lightly for about 10 minutes, the percentage dropped to 81% with an estimation of "3:40".

Now I'm letting it charge up to 100% for the first time and I'll take it from there when it's ready. Nothing conclusive yet.

Awesome! you finally got the machine, impressed by the speed?
 
I know that the battery estimates mean nothing, especially in the beginning of use, but when I took it out of the box, it estimated "7:45" with a battery percentage of 88%. I browsed very lightly for about 10 minutes, the percentage dropped to 81% with an estimation of "3:40".

Now I'm letting it charge up to 100% for the first time and I'll take it from there when it's ready. Nothing conclusive yet.

Mine was the same way out of the box. A full charge took care of it. When it was at 100% yesterday it was reporting 12-13 hours of charge left.
 
That's correct, more processor and more ram need more power.

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Happy testing guys, I've enjoyed this past week sharing my experience and very happy with my purchase and I have now a new Time Capsule and still saved $300+ from my inital purchased.

I'm stocked! :)

Whats your specs for 11 inch - i5 ? 8 gb ? 256 ssd?

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Our eyes are on you MUSIKA, next 24 hours of your testing will DECIDE my order
 
Right now I'm just loading Dropbox up (I don't have too much on Dropbox). I'm doing some light Safari browsing (5 tabs or so). Messages is open, too. Safari just unexpectedly quit.

Nothing too major is going on, this is pretty light usage. But the palm rests are noticeably a little warm, and I don't think it's from body heat (my hands aren't resting when I'm typing).

It's been about 25 minutes of this kind of usage. Battery is down from 100% to 89%.

11" i7/8/256. Still nothing conclusive yet.
 
Right now I'm just loading Dropbox up (I don't have too much on Dropbox). I'm doing some light Safari browsing (5 tabs or so). Messages is open, too. Safari just unexpectedly quit.

Nothing too major is going on, this is pretty light usage. But the palm rests are noticeably a little warm, and I don't think it's from body heat (my hands aren't resting when I'm typing).

It's been about 25 minutes of this kind of usage. Battery is down from 100% to 89%.

11" i7/8/256. Still nothing conclusive yet.


Appreciate your postings musika, but let's do a full 12 hour review where you 1st plug it in and charge it fully and then start reporting your numbers as you use it to the max in a real world day....! conclusive numbers will then kick in
 
Dropbox stuff is done. Now I just have several tabs in Safari, Messages open, App Store, and Activity Monitor.

Palm rests are a little warmer than I'd expected but now a huge deal. Still haven't heard the fan.

83% after 43 minutes of usage.
 
Computer is cooling down. Still running Safari and friends. Battery decrease rate is also slowing down immensely and the time estimation is rising (all the way up to 6:12 now) at 79% battery.

79% after running for 57 minutes.
 
Right now I'm just loading Dropbox up (I don't have too much on Dropbox). I'm doing some light Safari browsing (5 tabs or so). Messages is open, too. Safari just unexpectedly quit.

Nothing too major is going on, this is pretty light usage. But the palm rests are noticeably a little warm, and I don't think it's from body heat (my hands aren't resting when I'm typing).

It's been about 25 minutes of this kind of usage. Battery is down from 100% to 89%.

11" i7/8/256. Still nothing conclusive yet.

On the i7 Safari crashed on me to the point that I downloaded Chrome dmg and installed via USB, this was on my first clean ML install, weird. (now Safari does not crash anymore)
 
The battery meter is definitely stabling out.

It's been a little over 10 minutes and I've gone from 79% to 77%. That's not bad.

At the rate of 2% per 10 minutes, you'd get a little over 8 hours of battery life.
 
My i7 machine is definitely getting better already. The battery life time has been hovering around 6 hours remaining.

In the past 30 minutes or so the battery percentage has gone down 4%. With over ten Safari tabs, Messages.app, Byword, App Store, Prefs, Activity Monitor, and music streaming from SoundCloud. I have yet to hear any fan noise, even while Dropbox was doing its thing, and while some parts of the palm rest/keyboard are warm, it's cooling down now.

73%.
 
My i7 machine is definitely getting better already. The battery life time has been hovering around 6 hours remaining.

In the past 30 minutes or so the battery percentage has gone down 4%. With over ten Safari tabs, Messages.app, Byword, App Store, Prefs, Activity Monitor, and music streaming from SoundCloud. I have yet to hear any fan noise, even while Dropbox was doing its thing, and while some parts of the palm rest/keyboard are warm, it's cooling down now.

73%.


What setting is your brightness on? All the way or below that? I am thinking of getting a 13 inch 1.7/8/512 model soon so this helps me out a lot. Is your machine a 11 inch or 13 inch?
 
What setting is your brightness on? All the way or below that? I am thinking of getting a 13 inch 1.7/8/512 model soon so this helps me out a lot. Is your machine a 11 inch or 13 inch?

7 clicks below the max brightness. It's what is comfortable. I wasn't trying to go low or anything.

I've got an 11" i7/8/256.

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It's been almost an hour and my machine has only gone down 9%.

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I'm done for now. 1 hour and 48 minutes. 68%.
 

13-inch MacBook Air/1.3GHz Core i5 (Mid 2013)
Movie: 8 hours 18 mins
Peacekeeper: 5 hours 45 mins

13-inch MacBook Air/1.7GHz Core i7 CTO (Mid 2013)
Movie: 8 hours 7 mins
Peacekeeper: 4 hours 35 mins

In other words -no difference for watching movies. In the Peacekeeper tests the difference is pretty big - but take into account that during these tests the i7 outperformed i5 by 20 %, the article says.

Even though these results are for the 13" I believe the same will apply to the 11"...
 
13-inch MacBook Air/1.3GHz Core i5 (Mid 2013)
Movie: 8 hours 18 mins
Peacekeeper: 5 hours 45 mins

13-inch MacBook Air/1.7GHz Core i7 CTO (Mid 2013)
Movie: 8 hours 7 mins
Peacekeeper: 4 hours 35 mins

In other words -no difference for watching movies. In the Peacekeeper tests the difference is pretty big - but take into account that during these tests the i7 outperformed i5 by 20 %, the article says.

Even though these results are for the 13" I believe the same will apply to the 11"...

NOPE, that's a baseless belief and will NOT apply to 11'
 
We still DO NOT HAVE ANY Concrete RESULTS on i07 vs i-5 for 11'

Screw 13' ==> we DONT want it and that's why the TITLE of this forum PROUDLY SAYS "11" ==> PLEASE FOR HEAVENS SAKE DO NOT POST YOUR 13' useless results here.
 
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