Opinions on new MacBook Air

Cheetah Designs · 4 Aug 2013 at 16:22

J1nxy said:
I've got the i7 8GB 512 SSD one and the battery is very very good. It'll happily run for hours on battery.

Sorry by bad I meant relative to the quoted 13 hours.

Throrik · 4 Aug 2013 at 21:46

Cheetah Designs said:
Sorry by bad I meant relative to the quoted 13 hours.

Ran mine for just under 12 hours with the i7 model with moderate brightness, lowish keyboard backlight on and mainly browsing the web, writing code and watching some videos.

tsinc80697 · 7 Aug 2013 at 13:18

Just ordered myself a new MBA! 13", 1.7GHz and 8GB RAM. Going to see what ti's like for replacing my 2011 MBP as my main work machine. Current MBP has 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD in it, only thing that worries me is the lack of GPU power as I do like to play the odd game on my Thunderbolt monitor.

Hopefully it's a close match to my current machine otherwise it'll be going back to Apple within a week

Luke Burton · 9 Aug 2013 at 06:32

Has anyone experienced playing games on it yet? If so please share your experience with it. Looking to buy one.

Ryan-3 · 9 Aug 2013 at 10:25

Minecraft is easily at 30-35fps, and Rome total war is my most demanding, which is at 1440x900, with some decent settings, and it runs (at what appears to be 30fps) without a problem. I haven't anything more demanding though.

Some basic tests can be found here.

Luke Burton · 12 Aug 2013 at 06:44

Got the new MBA yesterday. First time mac user so enjoying the change. Can anyone recommend any cool or must have software to download please.

tsinc80697 · 12 Aug 2013 at 09:10

Alfred! I can't live without it on any mac

lamboman · 12 Aug 2013 at 17:44

XtraFinder is another one, isn't a standalone application, instead adds tabs, side-by-side tabs, cut/paste to Finder. Not sure what will happen to it after Mavericks, hopefully the side-by-side tab functionality will still be available!

Luke Burton · 13 Aug 2013 at 09:49

Cheers. How do i find out if i have the right mba. It dont say anything about the 12 hour battery life on the box etc.

lamboman · 13 Aug 2013 at 10:49

Luke Burton said:
Cheers. How do i find out if i have the right mba. It dont say anything about the 12 hour battery life on the box etc.

Model number on the box (usually M followed by other letters and numbers, which can be checked with the Apple website) and run through the spec to make sure it matches

Luke Burton · 13 Aug 2013 at 12:42

Brilliant. Thanks for your help

Jacksonn · 14 Aug 2013 at 22:01

How are people finding these? Average "work" usage email word ect? Getting the said battery life?

Scythe · 15 Aug 2013 at 21:21

Roughly, how long does it take to get a built to order MBA delivered to the UK? Heading back to uni soon, but want it delivered home so don't want to order too late and miss it.

PinkPig · 16 Aug 2013 at 13:52

Scythe said:
Roughly, how long does it take to get a built to order MBA delivered to the UK? Heading back to uni soon, but want it delivered home so don't want to order too late and miss it.

To give you an idea, I ordered on Friday 2 August, with their financing loan, and its scheduled to arrive on Monday 19 August or Tuesday 20 August. The finance delayed it by about 3 working days - without that I'd expect it to take about 2 weeks.

Rilot · 16 Aug 2013 at 14:19

Jacksonn said:
How are people finding these? Average "work" usage email word ect? Getting the said battery life?

I can easily last a whole day of work without a charge. No sleeping, no minimum brightness. Just turn it on at 9am and still have 20% left at 17:30.

Jacksonn · 16 Aug 2013 at 16:44

Rilot said:
I can easily last a whole day of work without a charge. No sleeping, no minimum brightness. Just turn it on at 9am and still have 20% left at 17:30.

Sounds perfect, only problem I have is the new Haswel mbp :/

Scythe · 16 Aug 2013 at 18:03

PinkPig said:
To give you an idea, I ordered on Friday 2 August, with their financing loan, and its scheduled to arrive on Monday 19 August or Tuesday 20 August. The finance delayed it by about 3 working days - without that I'd expect it to take about 2 weeks.

I'd better order it soon then! Thanks

Pug · 17 Aug 2013 at 00:07

picked up a 11.6" i5, 256GB, 4GB Air on impulse today, and i'm glad i did! Really lovely bit of kit, and my first Mac.

Totally sold, and don't think i'll be using my desktop much!

Scythe · 17 Aug 2013 at 11:10

Pug said:
picked up a 11.6" i5, 256GB, 4GB Air on impulse today, and i'm glad i did! Really lovely bit of kit, and my first Mac.

Totally sold, and don't think i'll be using my desktop much!

Good to hear, I'm intending on moving to my MBA as my main computer when I get it too.

Edit: Had a go on one at PC World and I'm very impressed in it! So much so I've ordered an i5/8GB RAM/256GB SSD as soon as I got home, looking forward to it!

Conanius · 17 Aug 2013 at 18:46

just made use of my Apple Edu Discount with the OU and bought:

MBA 13", i7, 8GB RAM, and then chucked in the 3 year AppleCare upgrade and the new 3TB Time Capsule. Our current MBP has served us well, but time for a change before all our money goes on our baby due in December !

Also decided to refresh our 2011 i7 Mac Mini. Ordered 16GB of Crucial RAM, and on OCUK just about to hit submit on a 2TB 2.5" drive and a 250GB 840 Evo Samsung SSD.

Computing just got quick again