Poll - Is my 11" Ultimate Defective?

[Sean Dempsey]

Does this list of annoyances warrant me demanding an exchange. This computer is about a month old

- Will not maintain WiFi when opening the lid after sleep. Any WiFi anywhere, work, home, stores, apple store. If I close the lid and open it, even a few seconds later, the WiFi has to be manually turned off from the menu bar, and turned back on.

- Fan and temperature sensor act strange, sometimes locking the fans on and reporting a extremely high temperature when the computer is totally cold.

- Computer seems to not sleep or hibernate, regardless of if I have a new user with no software running (to rule out dropbox/istat).

- Screen has a slight "inner drop shadow" around the inside edges of the screen about 1-2 millimeters around the edge. Extremely apparent with a light colored object on the screen edges.

- Battery life is far below advertised, getting around 3.5 hours of "wireless web."


Is my Air a lemon, or is the whole 2011 release of the 11" a series of lemons?

 

[miles01110]

You've got nothing to lose "demanding" an exchange, but your battery isn't an issue.

 

[johnhurley]

- Will not maintain WiFi when opening the lid after sleep. Any WiFi anywhere, work, home, stores, apple store. If I close the lid and open it, even a few seconds later, the WiFi has to be manually turned off from the menu bar, and turned back on.

Isn't that normal behavior? A wireless connection is going to drop when a laptop goes to sleep right?

 

[Sean Dempsey]

Isn't that normal behavior? A wireless connection is going to drop when a laptop goes to sleep right?

Not in any Macbook I've owned, which is 5. When you shut the lid of a Macbook, when you reopen the lid, the WiFi should come back, not become unavailable until you turn it off and turn it back on through the menubar icon.

 

[vitzr]

Isn't that normal behavior? A wireless connection is going to drop when a laptop goes to sleep right?

It is normal for a PC based Laptop, however my late model (2010 / 2011) MBP's and MBA's hold their wifi connectivity when I close the lid then reopen it 10 to 30 minutes later.

Nothing goes to sleep, keeps it's place, including a wifi connection and wakes up ready to go as well as a Mac.

Ya gotta love em

 

[NutsNGum]

Does this list of annoyances warrant me demanding an exchange. This computer is about a month old

- Will not maintain WiFi when opening the lid after sleep. Any WiFi anywhere, work, home, stores, apple store. If I close the lid and open it, even a few seconds later, the WiFi has to be manually turned off from the menu bar, and turned back on.

- Fan and temperature sensor act strange, sometimes locking the fans on and reporting a extremely high temperature when the computer is totally cold.

- Computer seems to not sleep or hibernate, regardless of if I have a new user with no software running (to rule out dropbox/istat).

- Screen has a slight "inner drop shadow" around the inside edges of the screen about 1-2 millimeters around the edge. Extremely apparent with a light colored object on the screen edges.

- Battery life is far below advertised, getting around 3.5 hours of "wireless web."


Is my Air a lemon, or is the whole 2011 release of the 11" a series of lemons?

1) Have you done the EFI update? This has solved the sleep-wifi drop off, for me.

2) Weird.

3) Have you checked your power/battery settings in system preferences?

4) Hmm.

5) That seems to be remarkably higher than a lot of other people in the forum have stated. A number of users on here have stated around 2 hours for wireless web, so you're doing alright there.

 

[iRCL]

You spent a lot of money on it. If you're concerned enough to write this post, your next step should be to make an appointment at an Apple store and bring it in.

 

[KPOM]

Try resetting the SMC and see if that helps.

Regarding losing the wi-fi, occasionally mine does (i.e. I need to manually choose it from the list), but not every time.

All the others you describe, apart from the battery, appear unusual. 3.5 hours is normal on the 11" (the 5 hours is under ideal conditions). I'd have it checked out.

 

[WarpSpawn]

It is normal for a PC based Laptop, however my late model (2010 / 2011) MBP's and MBA's hold their wifi connectivity when I close the lid then reopen it 10 to 30 minutes later.

It is not even normal for a Windows laptop, tbh. I am not aware of any device that connects to WiFi that cannot simply reconnect when coming out of standby. Seems a pretty fundamental thing really.

Actually, I tell a lie, I had some connection issues after prolonged standby on an Archos tablet but it was a PoS and might not have been normal behaviour even for that.

 

[wrinkster22]

apple will probably give you a new one if you ask. The battery though is average- i know it as atrocious I also have a 2011 13" air

 

[Stein357]

My 13" MBA's battery life is atrocious. Don't know how Apple could advertise 7 hours in good conscious.

 

[yegon]

Regarding sleep issues, after exhaustively disabling apps/services it turned out BetterTouchTool was preventing sleep on both my 2011 mba and late 08 mbp (both Lion).

My 13" MBA's battery life is atrocious. Don't know how Apple could advertise 7 hours in good conscious.

I partly agree - my battery life isn't atrocious and I'm actually largely satisfied with it, but I always get about 5 hours or so from average use. Thankfully, I find it incredibly quick to charge compared with my late 08 mbp.

Still, advertising 7hrs and boasting that it the result of extensive battery testing...hmm.

 

[daonesteven]

battery life on my 11" air is atrocious as well. I get that apple was testing under their "fair' conditions of tweaking settings that are probably less than how people use it by standard, but i'm getting about the same if not less than what my black macbook used to get when I first bought it in 2007, and I just assumed that an ssd would get more juice than out of a normal hd.