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I upgraded to Lion...

sunsnewmac

sunsnewmac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 3, 2007
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I have a late 2010 model 13" macbook air (the "old" new air) with only 2 GB of RAM. I read a lot of mixed stories about upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion but finally decided to take the plunge. My decision was based mainly on my desire to have full iCloud integration with my new iPhone.

I'm very very happy I made this decision! The download and install went seamlessly well, and I really like the new look and feel. Native apps like Mail and iCal look so different it's almost like I got a new machine. I dare say most apps are running better and faster after the upgrade, which was a real surprise. I've tested pretty much everything I use regularly (MS Office, iTunes, iPhoto, Firefox) and so far so very good. The reports of lags during shut-down and boot-up did not happen to me, either. There are a few features that I didn't know Lion had that I really love now, including the ability to boot where I left off before shut down with all my apps and their respective files already open. So I just wanted to say, if you are like me and hesitant about the upgrade that not all the experiences with the upgrade (no clean install for me either) are bad ones.
 
I was in this boat.. I've got the 11" 2010 Ultimate, and was unsure of what to do. It's nice to see you've had no problems with the switch, but my main concern is battery life. Seeing as I've got the 11, I have very little battery life to give up, and have heard that the upgrade to Lion takes away from it quite a bit. So when weighing my options, I had no real need for Lion, so why risk it? Have you noticed much change in your battery life?
 
I use a 2010 2 GB RAM MBA for Lion as well; its perfect.

Absolutely no problems. RAM usage is fine, and there are no shut downs or any of that stuff people seem to think that can happen. People should remember that the base 11" Air has 2 GB of RAM; Apple wouldn't ship a laptop that was incapable of running their operating system smoothly, or people would get a bad impression of Apple.
 
My experience is that 2 Gb are enough with Lion, if you don't have the need to install a virtual machine with Windows. If that's the case, the 2 Gb can be somewhat short.
 
From my experience, when I upgraded to Lion, CPU temps were higher, slightly longer to boot, lag after waking from sleep, battery life was significantly shorter. I was on Lion for about 2 months, I decided to downgrade back 2 weeks ago and my MBA seems so much faster and smoother on SL. I have the 11" MBA with the C2D and 2GB of ram.
 
I'm staying with Snow Leopard on a 2010 MBA, seems more laptop friendly, longer battery life, quicker wake from standby. Maybe I'll go with Lion after a few more point releases.
 
I had to do a clean install. I dont think Apples upgrade process for lion really works well.
 
I did not do a clean install and everything works fine with Lion, the upgrade was smooth as satin. In fact, I like Lion better overall than Snow Leopard, seems zippy and fresh.

I have not noticed a difference with battery life, and same with boot up/down times. Snow Leopard was actually getting laggy on me after waking from sleep, and Lion certainly isn't any worse. Both OSs are most laggy when waking from sleep with Firefox open, that's for sure. But I'm terrible with leaving a dozen or more tabs open at once.

I think the only problem I have is that now YouTube playback in Firefox has an annoying flicker problem.
 
Battery life on Lion could be better, no doubt. In order to get anywhere near the 7 hours that Apple touts, you'd have to dim your brightness level to 50%, which in my opinion is way too low for normal use, and avoid playing videos too heavily.

For my typical use (that is, iTunes playing music, WiFi on and browsing the web a bit, and writing in MS Word), my batt life from 100% is usually listed as anywhere from 5-6 hours. Again, not bad, but wish it was indeed closer to 7.

Besides this and a few other minor glitches, Lion is great.
 
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