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You guys getting 7 hours on new Macbook Air 13"?

S

Sangdushi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 9, 2011
128
0
I'm not :(. most I got so far was 4~ hours. could it be the flash content and full brightness?

just got it yesterday :D, freaking love it so far. can't believe I used windows for all those years :(, not only that but I hated on macs with my nerdy friends too lol
 
Sangdushi said:
I'm not :(. most I got so far was 4~ hours. could it be the flash content and full brightness?

just got it yesterday :D, freaking love it so far. can't believe I used windows for all those years :(, not only that but I hated on macs with my nerdy friends too lol
Click to expand...

Flash, and brightness will eat your battery alive. I use click to flash and 60-70% brightness I get 6 hours easily. Besides better battery life click to flash makes everything run so much smoother with saafi open and going. Can't believe it took me so long to realize what it does.
 
In the evening the macbook turns my brightness automatically to 30-40%, I even get more than 7 then, but I dont like it. Im also using 50% brightness and clicktoflash + adblocker etc.
 
really depends

Flash and games are usually the major drainers. I get about 6-7 hours from general web browsing and music playing. On the weekends, I use my Mac as a streaming machine to my PS3/Xbox 360 and get over 9+ hours without brightness off.
 
Sangdushi said:
I'm not :(. most I got so far was 4~ hours. could it be the flash content and full brightness?

just got it yesterday :D, freaking love it so far. can't believe I used windows for all those years :(, not only that but I hated on macs with my nerdy friends too lol
Click to expand...

easily get 7 hrs with wifi net browsing
4hrs with portal and dirt2
:D
 
Screen on low brightness and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi switched off, yes.

Handy when you forget your charger and have a 5 hour round trip, watched 2 films and had plenty of juice left.
 
Turn your brightness down to around 50% and install Click2Flash. You will see your battery life go to around 6 hours when doing basic web browsing. I love Flash but those pesky little Flash ads eat away at your battery on Macs.
 
I got 9 hours..was using it at 4 blocks of brightness and was reading pdf files and surfing safari and all basic stuff

to increase battery life u can disable all ports like the USB, memory card reader, thunderbolt port and this would increase battery life...

i am yet to do so which will increase the batt life further
 
Today I have been using my i5 13" Air for 7 hours straight, surfing the web and word processing, and I still have 15% battery life left. My brightness is set to about 40% and my keyboard light is kept on one bar.

Only got it the day before yesterday and I'm very impressed. I'd struggle to get 2hrs out of the windows machine I had previously.
 
aryan118 said:
I got 9 hours..was using it at 4 blocks of brightness and was reading pdf files and surfing safari and all basic stuff

to increase battery life u can disable all ports like the USB, memory card reader, thunderbolt port and this would increase battery life...

i am yet to do so which will increase the batt life further
Click to expand...

how do you disable all the ports?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I usually get 5.5 to 6.5, but I shun Flash and usually keep my brightness below 25%. Drops to about 4 hrs if I watch a bunch of video, MP4 or WMV.
 
I get about 5 from varying usage. Just wish Coolbook ran on i5/i7 cpu's, that'd prob add 30 minutes to an hour :(
 
I can get over 8 browsing, editing in pages, reading pdfs, etc.

Screen around 50%, key backlight off, bluetooth off, flash not installed (I just use chrome when necessary).

Otherwise five seems typical.
 
OP, 4 sounds right based on what you're doing. I always say take 60% of the claimed battery life for real world use.

For the weight, the air is still top in class. For the run time per watt hour, still top of the class. For longevity of the battery, still top of the class (never verified). I don't understand how come more people don't trump this aspect of the air up--battery lasts 3 times longer (1000 charges) compared to other batteries. All other laptop batteries that I have had are down to like 65% after one year. So to me it's the sustained battery life over time (the first 2 to 3 years) that should matter most to people. In that respect, your air will still be getting 4 hours for alot longer than other laptops, who may eek out ahead brand new, but will lag behind in not too long.

Never understood why Flash is so terrible. Maybe it is. It seems like as soon as jobs said flash stinks, everyone decided that it does indeed stink. It does cause an inordinate number of crashes, but maybe that's b/c it's powering an inordinately large number of programs these days.
 
Nope. I get closer to 5-6 hours, depending on what I'm doing--and usually it's closer to 5. I mean, it suffices, but it's definitely not close to 7 hours. Didn't Apple stress that the 7 Hour mark was achieved when running the Air on "powerful" settings too? I thought I remembered reading something like that. It doesn't seem to achieve it.

Side note: Man, it's so unbelievably comfortable typing on my Air! (that's what I'm doing now, if you can't guess!)
 
i usually get around 5. with wifi and bluetooth on. constant internet browsing, light youtube, mail, etc...
 
13" 2010 here, but i get constantly over 7 hours, windows and osx.
if i turn wifi off, i get even 11 hrs... (reading mode)

amazing machine. (tho i undervolt too, but still... its 1hr max)
 
I think I get around 4.5 hours. Just not willing to skimp on brightness. I also have flash installed. Clicktoflash made my browsers buggy.
 
lxeran said:
13" 2010 here, but i get constantly over 7 hours, windows and osx.
if i turn wifi off, i get even 11 hrs... (reading mode)

amazing machine. (tho i undervolt too, but still... its 1hr max)
Click to expand...

How can you get 11 hours while apple advertises for 7?? Even with all connections closed and no brightness and keyboard lighting...

Ah nvm, undervolting. Is that safe? And how do you do it?
Also, can you disable the turbo mode and keep it at 1.7ghz?
 
My MBA seems to follow some strange sort of logic.

I watched an hour of video - full screen, 75% brightness; which only consumed 15% of battery. Then I browsed the web and 90 minutes later I was down at 30%.
 
orfeas0 said:
How can you get 11 hours while apple advertises for 7?? Even with all connections closed and no brightness and keyboard lighting...

Ah nvm, undervolting. Is that safe? And how do you do it?
Also, can you disable the turbo mode and keep it at 1.7ghz?
Click to expand...

Undervolting can be done with Coolbook, however, it only works with Core 2 Duo and older Intel Mac, only works properly under Snow Leopard (Lion is a different story), and it doesn't look like it'll be updated to support Core i or Lion anytime soon.

In short, it's an advantage of the 2010 Mac Air. 2011 and newer models may not have it for a long while.

Aside from saving battery life, it also helps with heat.
 
psxp said:
is there anything to help do a Click2Flash type thing in FireFox?
Click to expand...

I use FlashBlock for the same control in Firefox, which works well. Puts a small button on your tool bar so you can toggle flash on for sites you actually want it on. Definitely helps eliminate battery drain due to flash.
 
Battery Tip of the day (actually, I'd like someone to validate :)):

In Safari, I naturally try and keep the text I'm focusing on in the centre of the screen. With this cool natural scrolling/two finger swipe, it is easy to do, and just a habit now. But this means I am constantly scrolling. And that really appears to do a number on the battery.

I'm trying to adjust how I use safari now. Full screen. Browse to the web page, scroll to get the text filling up my screen, then read top to bottom without touching the touchpad. Only when I reach the bottom will I go and scroll a new full page.

This appears to make a very significant difference on the battery while browsing the web.
 
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