Sell me a mac

Good point, though I have a gaming desktop and it's not like I would ever use a laptop for 'proper' gaming. Maybe like Minecraft or something :p..
 
Agree mate though i am suprised at how capable my 2010 13" is. In Windows get 120fps avg on CSS on high and Sims 3 on high runs really smoothly as well. L4D on High and L4D2 on mostly Medium. Not bad results at all to be honest though the HD3000 is meant to be about 20% worse at higher settings.
 
Well went into the apple shop, had a play around and a talk with one of the guys and came out with a 13" MBA.

The further education discount was pretty rubbish! (Compared to the university one, its like 6% vs 13% or something.)
It was £1099 and I got a £65.94 discount.. (and the £65 mac store code)

Just feel like I'm constantly going to drop it if I hold it. Need to look for a case of some kind. Got back to work with it, and in the afternoon the wireless screws up I'm thinking "Ok I'll just use a network cable" ..... oh wait :p
 
Well, I'm sure the battery isn't right.. Swear I didn't get even 5 hours of basic use from it today.
Had a roaring fan for some reason when browsing and listening to music.. restarted.
It was SILENT, just turned on tvcatchup.com and its pretty loud again, not as bad, but pretty loud, can still hear it with volume on 100%..

The RAM usage earlier seemed a bit weird, I was on like Firefox and iTunes or something and I was using the majority of 4GB of RAM...
 
TVcatchup.com uses Flash. Flash is rubbish and eats CPU hence the fan noise and bobbins battery life.

Mac OS X loves RAM. Broadly speaking it will let an Application use as much as it likes until another application needs it at, which point it'll hand back what it doesn't really need for the new App. Check out Activity Monitor - it classifies the RAM usage by type. What's the point in having 4GB of RAM if there's a lot of it sat around doing nothing?
 
I only had tvcatchup going for a few minutes, it was on charge then anyway. When it was off charge I was only browsing and on spotify really. But the noise was worse just before I did the tvcatchup test, I was on msn videocall and spotify....roaring away. Like I was on San Andreas earlier for 10 minutes, I can see why that would make the fans go at it, but msn and spotify.

I had a look at the monitor, at one point yesterday I had like 55MB free, 800MB wired, 1GB inactive or something..Didn't take a screen capture of that, but this wasn't to long after.
Oh8JE.png

I just turned it on now, so have about 2GB free, 1GB wired, 850MB active, 140MB inactive. Full battery (4h 39m predicted) edit: Though that goes up and down between 3.5 hours and 5 I guess it can't be 'trusted' though meant to get like 7?
 
Last edited:
In regards to RAM

apple support page said:
Free memory:

This is RAM that's not being used.


Wired memory:

Information in this memory can't be moved to the hard disk, so it must stay in RAM. The amount of Wired memory depends on the applications you are using.


Active memory:

This information is currently in memory, and has been recently used.


Inactive memory:

This information in memory is not actively being used, but was recently used.

For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit it, the RAM that Mail was using is marked as Inactive memory. This Inactive memory is available for use by another application, just like Free memory. However, if you open Mail before its Inactive memory is used by a different application, Mail will open quicker because its Inactive memory is converted to Active memory, instead of loading Mail from the slower hard disk.


Used :

This is the total amount of memory used.
Click to expand...
 
and cost wise the full student gets 3 yrs aplecare included i.e. free.. something i pay over £200 for so its 15% plus warranty thats a huge saving... correct me if I'm wrong but i usually buy secondhand from students and the receipt is discounted as such and i check warranty if 3yrs so I'm sure I'm right..
 
oli356 said:
I only had tvcatchup going for a few minutes, it was on charge then anyway. When it was off charge I was only browsing and on spotify really. But the noise was worse just before I did the tvcatchup test, I was on msn videocall and spotify....roaring away. Like I was on San Andreas earlier for 10 minutes, I can see why that would make the fans go at it, but msn and spotify.

I had a look at the monitor, at one point yesterday I had like 55MB free, 800MB wired, 1GB inactive or something..Didn't take a screen capture of that, but this wasn't to long after.
http://i.imgur.com/Oh8JE.png

I just turned it on now, so have about 2GB free, 1GB wired, 850MB active, 140MB inactive. Full battery (4h 39m predicted) edit: Though that goes up and down between 3.5 hours and 5 I guess it can't be 'trusted' though meant to get like 7?[/QUOTE]

You need more RAM dude. You have a LOT of page outs and a tonne of swap too. You want to limit your caching as much as possible. If you got 8GB in here you would notice a definite speed increase and responsiveness of your machine. I seriously think since Lion 6GB is the absolute bare minimum.

Here's mine;

[IMG]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5452/screenshot20110916at105.png

It shouldn't be spooling up the fans with that little going on. Install iStatpro on your dashboard and check the temps.

EDIT - Just read up and you're on an Air. They can't be upgraded can they? Maybe a 13" MBP would suit you better. I'm being such a stickler for RAM as i was always getting slow down and stutters before upgrading memory and it makes a Mac run so much faster having a tonne of memory.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
That was my concern with the MBA being so thin with a similar chip to my MBP, When my MBP is on my lap and I have a few programs open, youtube videos, scrolling quite fast down website such as dailymail with a lot of images the MBP gets quite toasty.
Although the fan's dont ramp up much unless playing simple game apps etc.

Do we know the maximum temperature of a MBP/MBA 13" before it is considered dangerous?
 
Thinking of returning it (I think I can within 14 days)? And getting a 13" MBP instead... The Pro I can put a SSD into if I want to, though not sure how fussed I will be with it, and it means I can actually 'store' stuff onto it. Yes it would be heavier and the screen isn't as nice etc but its more future-proof really.
 
Logsi said:
You need more RAM dude. You have a LOT of page outs and a tonne of swap too. You want to limit your caching as much as possible. If you got 8GB in here you would notice a definite speed increase and responsiveness of your machine. I seriously think since Lion 6GB is the absolute bare minimum.

<snip>
Click to expand...

No he doesn't. The Page outs and the swap are fine.
 
From personal experience having any page outs and swaps slowed my computer down and generally made the computer stutter. With more RAM it doesn't however. What makes you say that it's fine? Any articles about that you could point me in the direction of explaining it? As i said, when i had swaps and pages it bogged and stuttered my computer.

Also, doing the things he's doing on the computer i think he'd be more suited to 8GB of memory anyway. I know OS X is supposed to be wonderful with handling inactive RAM but it isn't. I was forced to upgrade my memory as it just wasn't clearing and had to resort to repairing permissions to clear the inactive RAM whenever i did something intensive on Aperture/Logic/Final Cut. Whenever my mac got to around 100-150mb free memory it wouldn't use anymore or clear inactive memory and then went onto caching.

I think a Pro may suit your needs better. I wasn't aware the Air couldn't be upgraded, especially in the RAM department.
 
Last edited:
I'm an Apple Certified Support Professional on 10.5 so I've got a good idea what I'm on about. If the paging figures were into the tens of gigs then the OP would benefit from more RAM. Alternatively he could stop loading 30+ tabs that use Flash in the web browser at the same time as listening to iTunes and processing a load of photographs.

Paging is much less of an issue on an SSD equipped machine such as the MacBook Air. I don't know what kind of mac you are using, but a older MacBook with a slow 5400rpm drive that's nearly full would start to beach ball when it starts paging seriously.

I'm running 4GB in mine, and the only time I get close to running out of RAM is when running multiple virtual machines in addition to my usual apps (Mail, Safari, iTunes, Office). Typical usage is between 2 and 2.5GB, with the remainder free/inactive.
 
MagicBoy said:
I'm an Apple Certified Support Professional on 10.5 so I've got a good idea what I'm on about. If the paging figures were into the tens of gigs then the OP would benefit from more RAM. Alternatively he could stop loading 30+ tabs that use Flash in the web browser at the same time as listening to iTunes and processing a load of photographs.

Paging is much less of an issue on an SSD equipped machine such as the MacBook Air. I don't know what kind of mac you are using, but a older MacBook with a slow 5400rpm drive that's nearly full would start to beach ball when it starts paging seriously.

I'm running 4GB in mine, and the only time I get close to running out of RAM is when running multiple virtual machines in addition to my usual apps (Mail, Safari, iTunes, Office). Typical usage is between 2 and 2.5GB, with the remainder free/inactive.
Click to expand...

There's no need to pull out the Apple Certified card. I worded my response carefully as i knew you were, i explained that this is "from my own personal experience". I don't have a special fancy Apple Certified card to pull but i have a lot of experience trying to troubleshoot my paging problems throughout 3 years of having them. Have you experienced a lot of paging and swaps out of interest while using intensive programs and also experienced OS X not clearing inactive RAM as it should?

I'm running a 500GB 7200rpm drive in a late Unibody 2008 2.8Ghz 15" MacBook Pro. This would be a SSD but i need a bigger drive. Looking at the Momentus XT.
 
Anyway, thanks guys

At work ATM, just went to return it.. The woman didn't even check the box :s, walked in asked for refund, looks at my receipt, I put my card in, card out, give her bag. Walk out, now to wait for the money to go back into my account then I'll buy a mbp and find a place to buy 8gb ram
 
Logsi said:
There's no need to pull out the Apple Certified card. I worded my response carefully as i knew you were, i explained that this is "from my own personal experience".

<snip>
Click to expand...

You seem to have misunderstood my intensions. I'm not trying to use whatever qualifications I might or might not have to lord it over people. I mentioned it to indicate that I'm not quoting stuff I read on the interwebz. If you've ever taken a good look around the MacRumors forums there is all sorts of rubbish about RAM usage and paging banded around. For me to assume that OcUK posters know I have an ACSP would be big-headed. Short version - no offence intended.

I've encountered paging problems on Mac Pros at work that were running large Creative Suite documents with only 2GB of RAM, but not as yet performance problems due to OS X failing to releasing inactive RAM. To an extent it would stand to reason that it depends on how the machine is used and the applications in use. Our users power them off each night due to office rules.

The Momentus XT is rather tempting, I'm trying to justify one. Big SSDs are still ridiculously expensive and with the MacBook being my daily machine I need somewhere to store media libraries and VMs.
 
No worries dude. I was in fact hoping you could point me to an article or support document supporting what was said so i could learn a little bit more about it.

I have 8GBs of RAM in my Late 2008 Unibody which isn't supposed to be supported too. When i put 6GBs in originally (2+4GB) it worked much better than 4GB and didn't stutter as much. Now i have 8GB matched dual channel it is much smoother and faster. An upgrade that isn't supposed to work too. Sneaky EFI update last year some time allowed this.

What I do on my machine is photographic work Aperture and CS5, iTunes, Safari, Mail, WoW, Logic and some video editing occasionally. The stuttering from paging and swaps was most prominent in WoW and Aperture which was annoying to say the least. It's like it was keeping the RAM inactive from Safari or iTunes.

The Momentus XT has been out for a year or something and i don't want to go buy one if they get updated soon. But it looks like trade off with speed and size. My current Seagate has had nearly 700k load cycles and i'm told they're only rated for 300-600k so watch this space for thoughts on a XT. :p
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom