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I inherited a like new base model 13" mid-2011 i5/128/4. It's still running Lion with approximately 65 battery cycles. Windows user bought it, tried it for a while, and put it back in the box.

It's snappy on Lion but I'm wondering if I should update the OS to gain more features. For those who have updated, which OS would run the best without losing functionality?

Version 10.8: Mountain Lion
Version 10.9: Mavericks
Version 10.10: Yosemite
Version 10.11: El Capitan

Thanks in advance.
What did you choose and did it over heat with your choice of os ???? I also have a MBA mid 2011 with the same specs and on 10.10.5 its overheating frequently :(
 
What did you choose and did it over heat with your choice of os ???? I also have a MBA mid 2011 with the same specs and on 10.10.5 its overheating frequently :(

Really?

I have a mid 2011 MBA running 10.11 with no overheating whatsoever. In fact, I've had Lion, Mavericks (skipped Mountain Lion), Yosemite, and El Capitan on it, with no issues whatsoever.

BL.
 
What did you choose and did it over heat with your choice of os ???? I also have a MBA mid 2011 with the same specs and on 10.10.5 its overheating frequently :(
You may want to pop off the bottom and blow out the fan and heatsink with some compressed air. If you aren't comfortable doing that yourself, pretty much any computer shop can do it for free/cheap.

My 2011 air rarely gets warm enough to make the fan audible, even when under heavy load.
 
I just recently put a clean install of El Captain on my 13" mid-2011 i5/128/4 and it's been rock solid for weeks. I came straight over from Mavericks and have been pleasantly surprised how well it's taken on the new OS.

Well done Apple.
 
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I got my lightly used 13' MacBook Air 128GB back from my dad. Low cycle count. He hardly used it in the year and a half he had it. He still has his PC but swapped to iPad for a portable.

Anyhoo, I have El Capitan installed and running great. I always use the latest software. Lower light gaming heat than Yosemite. Never hear the fans.
 
Really?

I have a mid 2011 MBA running 10.11 with no overheating whatsoever. In fact, I've had Lion, Mavericks (skipped Mountain Lion), Yosemite, and El Capitan on it, with no issues whatsoever.

BL.
Yeah i think i have discovered that its the logic board :(
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I got my lightly used 13' MacBook Air 128GB back from my dad. Low cycle count. He hardly used it in the year and a half he had it. He still has his PC but swapped to iPad for a portable.

Anyhoo, I have El Capitan installed and running great. I always use the latest software. Lower light gaming heat than Yosemite. Never hear the fans.
Yeah sadly i think its the logic board not sure what in the logic board but considering i have checked everything else
 
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Yeah i think i have discovered that its the logic board :(
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Yeah sadly i think its the logic board not sure what in the logic board but considering i have checked everything else

That sucks. What's your battery cycle count. Pretty sure these should go on with no issues for years. Mine is 351.
 
Have Mavericks but I'm going to upgrade to El Cap today. I have several open licenses for Office 365 so I figured why not and I already upgraded my Parallels for El Capitan six months ago but never upgraded OS.
 
So... What about Sierra on MBA 2011? )))

runs fine for me, on my Mid-2011 13" MBA.

In fact, smoother than El Capitan, Mavericks, all the way back to Lion.

As Yosemite was actually smoother for me than El Cap, so I'd put Yosemite slightly below Sierra.

BL.
 
I've just upgraded my partners 2010 MBA (2.13Ghz/4GB RAM) from 10.10.5 to 10.11.2 and if anything it seemed a little quicker. Certainly no slower, so I'm sure your newer model will be just fine.

I upgraded my 2013 MBA to a 2016 MB, so my partner got my 2013 MBA and I got the 2010 MBA back :D

Normally I would have sold this on eBay, but I wanted something to play around with Linux so have been using the 2010 MBA for this. I've got it setup using rEFInd to boot between macOS and Elementary OS, and have upgraded macOS to Sierra 10.12.4. It's still more than capable of most day-to-day office tasks and someone picking it up would never know it was a 7 year old machine.
 
For me, the main issue with Sierra is that sometimes it does completely shut itself down without any warning :)
 
Went to the GeniusBar today for them to put a newer OS into my MacMini mid-2011. They put in Sierra, and now it's so slow as to be non-functional. Was that too late an OS for my machine?
 
I recently found a 11-inch Mid 2011 MBA (1.6Ghz i5, 4GB, and 128GB storage) at work and it's running Lion 10.7.3. I didn't do anything much on it other than opening iTunes and some windows, everything was responsive. With many background stuff/iCloud going on these days, Lion seems pretty good.

Went to the GeniusBar today for them to put a newer OS into my MacMini mid-2011. They put in Sierra, and now it's so slow as to be non-functional. Was that too late an OS for my machine?

I have a Mac mini 2012 (2.6Ghz i7, 16GB RAM, and 1TB Fusion drive) at home. I skipped Sierra and did a clean install of High Sierra 10.3.1. It rans well compares to El Capitan and the fan doesn't kick in much even under Parallels Desktop 13 w/Windows 10.
 
Went to the GeniusBar today for them to put a newer OS into my MacMini mid-2011. They put in Sierra, and now it's so slow as to be non-functional. Was that too late an OS for my machine?

I have a MBA 2011 running Sierra without any speed issues. Have you tried the SMC + NVRAM resets? Note also that it could be spotlight is indexing your drive (personally I turn that off and ensure it remains off as I don't use spotlight).
 
I have a MacBook Air mid-2011 11" as well, with 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5, 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 Ram.
It's running El Capitan well for me.

I'm hoping I won't need to update my computer for a couple more years, since I intend on purchasing an iPad Pro soon, and if my Mac wasn't performing as well as it is then I would probably not be in the market for an iPad Pro since it will cost about a grand.

I thank the SSD in this machine for it performing as well as it has. I've used a lot of my friends' Macs who have iMacs or MacBook Pros with HDDs, and they're painfully slow! I use a completely maxed out 2013 Mac Pro at work, so I don't necessarily need a fast processor for rendering stuff for my own personal use since I'll just be able to use that machine if I ever need to render anything intensive. I mostly just need my MacBook Air for file management, and the occasional photoshop work. I'm sure it will last a few more years with these tasks.

How long do you all expect your Airs to last before you're in the market for another machine?

I posted this comment on this thread a little over two years ago, and at the time I had mentioned that I was hoping my MacBook Air would last me a couple more years. It has now been two years since that post, and my Air is still functioning rather well; the machine is 6.5 years old.

It is currently running macOS Sierra v.10.12.6, although I did decide to do a complete reformat of the SSD and start fresh about half a year ago. I figured most of my stuff was on the cloud nowadays or on external hard drives if I really needed to access it, which I rarely do, so the machine has been keeping up. It's a responsive machine, although I honestly don't use it anymore except to occasionally connect to my HDTV through HDMI and watch stuff.

I do have the original 12.9" iPad Pro, which I love and use primarily for YouTube and other daily web browsing. Plus the speakers on the old Air are useless. The battery life is pretty bad, although I still don't ever use the Air outside of the home.

I'm still using the MacPro for work content, although it has since migrated into my home, hehe.
 
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My 2010 MBA Ultimate is still going strong, although not used quite as heavily these days. It still has 10.12.6 installed but as been configured to boot a couple of flavours of Linux (elementary and Mint) and TrueOS (FreeBSD). It works great running Linux but no wireless drivers for FreeBSD so slightly less useable. I was using my Mum's windows laptop at the weekend which is just over 2 years old and it's still significantly faster and nicer to use than that for basic home stuff.
 
My MacBook Air is still my one and only laptop, which I use for everything related to work and entertainment. Hope to use it until 2020 :)
UPD: battery life is at least 3 hours.
 
My MacBook Air is still my one and only laptop, which I use for everything related to work and entertainment. Hope to use it until 2020 :)
UPD: battery life is at least 3 hours.
I got mine MBA Mid-2011 with more than five years old, and 336 battery cycles. And I use this every day for at least 6-8 hours.
I only open it to inspect some type of corrosion every six months. If it accumulates just a little I use isopropyl alcohol to clean it safely. This is something you want to do if you want to maintain the optimal functioning of your motherboard. And cleaning accumulated dust and dirt helps extend the life of the fan.
I use all macOS from Lion to High Sierra. Just disable some functions and services you don't use.
 
As an update to my original post from 2015, I'm still rocking my 11" 2011 i5/2GB/128GB Air and use it on a daily basis in my classroom. It's a fantastic little laptop, and I have it dual booting between El Cap and Win10. I've been debating upgrading it to High Sierra, but I'm a little nervous how it'll run with only 2GB of RAM. I'll probably clone it at some point, upgrade, and try it out. That way if it runs like butts, I can just clone my El Cap install back on it :)
 
As an update to my original post from 2015, I'm still rocking my 11" 2011 i5/2GB/128GB Air and use it on a daily basis in my classroom. It's a fantastic little laptop, and I have it dual booting between El Cap and Win10. I've been debating upgrading it to High Sierra, but I'm a little nervous how it'll run with only 2GB of RAM. I'll probably clone it at some point, upgrade, and try it out. That way if it runs like butts, I can just clone my El Cap install back on it :)

Why not just upgrade to Sierra instead of High Sierra?

To me, a clean install on my 2011 13" MBA with 4GB of ram was really important, especially if you experienced slowdown on El Capitan.

The old saying of just letting Apple do what it does and don't bother with clean install only worked from Lion to Maverick. I should have done a clean install in earlier version too.
 
I have an i7 4GB 11" MacBook Air. Disk is upgraded to 1TB and I just upgraded the WiFi BLE card. It is on its second battery.
I am running High Sierra with all the features and it is doing well. Very happy with it for general use and an occasional compile.
It also has BootCamp with Windows 10
It is my 3rd machine for portability. I have an iPad Pro, but there are some things you can only do on a Mac.
 
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