Go from first gen Air to latest rev?

[ScottFitz]

I am generally asking this MBA to do more than it was designed to do. Videos slow it down painfully. It's just over all very slow. OVERHEATS. etc.

i do love the lighted keyboard and use it all the time when I"m traveling.

Do the latest Airs have all these slow downs and get flaming hot and can't run a youtube video with out it getting crazy sloppy in 10 min?

I realize there's no lit keyboard now.

Better off with a 13" Pro? That's sort of what I'm thining, but I'm having a difficulty waiting for the next MBP rev in the next few months. My company is offering to upgrade me either way, but they won't wait till summer on the newest 13" MBP.

 

[upaymeifixit]

I'm in the same boat. Been wondering this myself. At the apple store they seemed much faster, but they always do.

 

[aristobrat]

Night and day difference between first and current gen 13" MBAs, IMO. Especially if your first-gen MBA wasn't SSD.

I've never felt my current gen 13" get hot, even under load. No problems with videos. Some flash ones can still get the fan spinning when in clamshell mode driving an external 23" Cinema Display, but the performance is fine. No extra fan spinning watching HD avi/mpeg videos for me.

I went from a 15" i7 MPB to an ultimate Air and am loving the Air. Would prefer backlit keyboard. That and the iSight quality is worse than the first-gen MBA are my only gripes. Love the SSD speed!!!!

 

[Penooker]

They are much faster. The use of the Nvidia 320M makes 1080p video playback, even from Youtube, a pinch. The computer is still perfectly usable. The fan speeds up after a few minutes. If ventilation isn't blocked, the bottom of the laptop only gets warm. If you block the ventilation, it gets burn level hot.

 

[amnost]

I am generally asking this MBA to do more than it was designed to do. Videos slow it down painfully. It's just over all very slow. OVERHEATS. etc.

i do love the lighted keyboard and use it all the time when I"m traveling.

Do the latest Airs have all these slow downs and get flaming hot and can't run a youtube video with out it getting crazy sloppy in 10 min?

I realize there's no lit keyboard now.

Better off with a 13" Pro? That's sort of what I'm thining, but I'm having a difficulty waiting for the next MBP rev in the next few months. My company is offering to upgrade me either way, but they won't wait till summer on the newest 13" MBP.

Based on your circumstances, I definitely think that you should get the latest 13-inch MacBook Air. It's crazy-fast in comparison to your current MacBook Air. If you're really interested in those types of differences, you can bump up your memory to 4GB for $100.

 

[Deep_Thought]

I've gone from a Rev A 128SSD (runcore) 1.8 to a 11" 1.4 with 4GB ram - amazing difference - I now use this as my main work computer running CoRD to remote to 5 servers at a time, VM as well as Mail, Chrome and Firefox for LogMeIn and I haven't heard the fans yet! WIth my old air the fan's would kick in about 15 minutes after starting up!

 

[KPOM]

The Rev Ds are vastly improved, particularly the 13" models. I had a Rev A w/HD, upgraded later that year to the Rev B w/SSD, and then switched to the "Ultimate 13" Rev D model. The jump to Rev B w/SSD was significant. The leap to Rev D was even bigger, even though on paper the machines looked pretty similar.

The NVIDIA 320m IGP handles HD videos very well (far better than the Intel graphics did in the Rev A). Heat management is significantly better and I don't have overheating issues even when running Windows 7 in the background. The SSD in the Rev D is about 3-4 times as fast as the SSD in the Rev B.

 

[cleric]

It's still night and day difference between my Rev B 1.86 SSD and my Rev D 4gb 1.86 SSD. The new vent design helps a lot I believe for cooling along with other design changes, the new gpu seems to help a lot more than I would have expected. The battery and instant on is simply wonderful.

 

[Scottsdale]

The refurbished store has $1099 MBA 13" with 1.86GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, and 128GB SSD. At first, you might think it's too similar, but it's really worth the upgrade. Sell your original for $600, and pay about that much out of your pocket and get the super resolution display, faster SSD, incredible GPU, SD card slot, extra USB, and the world...

I looked into buying the prior generation for my son, but the display resolution itself is worth the upgrade. In addition, the prior gen sells for $1099 and has slightly faster CPU, same size SSD, and similar. But the added features like HD display, better GPU, extra ports, and instant on all adds up to incredible.

In addition, if someone doesn't care about running Windows in a VM, this is an incredible buy and worth skipping the extra RAM, drive space, and etc.