Is my Air faulty or is the MBA seriously under powered

[al82]

I have had y air a few days now.

I have a couple of saved movies, they are avi files and 700mg.

They run fine on my pc, yet on the air the videos have lag. Its not too bad but def noticeable. Its a 700mg avi file, why would he air have problems playing something my old 1ghz laptop played without problems.

Making me consider getting the new pro.

I have to mention that it always happens after 5 mins of watching it, the fan comes on and it slows down, even moving the mouse lags.

Is my air faulty or do they all slow under any form of strain?

 

[kanon14]

what's the resolution of your film?

 

[shoulin333]

you on battery in power save mode?


try putting it to normal


doesnt sound right .... the MBA plays 1080P videos perfect on my 24" lcd

 

[26139]

uh...

You want to go from a MBA to MBP? A MB would whup a MBA.

 

[al82]

Anyone else had these problems?

 

[markrivers]

the compromise for the sexiness
i suggest you call apple or go to a genius bar if you have a store near our area

 

[Abstract]

No, that isn't one of the compromises. It should handle that sort of file just fine.

Try the performance setting in the Energy Savers preferences.

 

[Zorn]

You want to go from a MBA to MBP? A MB would whup a MBA.

It really depends on what you are doing. In general use, my MBA definitely felt faster than my 17" SR MBP with 4GB of RAM. It would launch programs faster and just felt quicker.

 

[Mr.Green]

From your description, it sounds like your computer is overheating after a few minutes and shutting down one of the cores.

While the video is playing, open Activity Monitor and see if one of the cores shows no activity.

 

[Mr.Green]

BTW, the Macbook Pros with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 have hardware h.264 decoding, so watching h.264 encoded movies will have almost no CPU utilization. The GMA X3100 doesn't have any hardware acceleration of H.264/WMV/DivX/XviD video.

 

[hotsauce]

Wirelessly posted (Apple Communication Device: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

Bein' sexy ain't easy.

 

[ayeying]

I have no lags with regular AVI files (700mb movies). I run 2 Virtual Machines on VMWare Fusion and still play movies without any lag.

 

[SodiumBenzoate]

Check your temps. The MBA should have more than enough power to watch AVI movies without any issues.

 

[al82]

Thank you for the replies. Think i'll just swap it over with another one and give it one last go

 

[al82]

Got another MBA and im happy to say avis and hd trailers all running fine. Thanks for the help guys, maybe the last unit was faulty.

 

[netdog]

Interesting. I wonder what the problem was.

 

[MRU]

^ obviously something faulty, as mine has no problems playing back AVI's on battery even at 720p

 

[designed]

^ obviously something faulty, as mine has no problems playing back AVI's on battery even at 720p

Neither does mine at first but after ten minutes or so the stuttering slowly creeps in, I'm guessing overheating. Seems kinda odd, since the CPU load is only about 50-70% at the time but the temp and loads are up and the fan is screaming at 6200rpm.

 

[al82]

The over heating problem, i asume there is nothing they can do to fix via an update.

 

[jjahshik32]

It really depends on what you are doing. In general use, my MBA definitely felt faster than my 17" SR MBP with 4GB of RAM. It would launch programs faster and just felt quicker.

Its probably because you have the ssd model. If you dont have the ssd then its all in your head.

 

[al82]

Lol, i dont have the SSD.

My last MBA had the same problem, even when watching a 300mg divx file after 10-15 minutes the fan would kick in full force and the video woud start to stutter.

I guess what i really want to know is if i swap it over again will i have the same problem???

Has anyone here used their mac air for aver a week and watched full tv episodes on it without problems??

Its really annoying, during my lunch break i was going to watch the apprentice, but it stuttered so much tha it wasn't worth it so i shut it off. Then thought is it worth £1200 if i cant even watch a divx file, im hoping ive just had bad luck and got 2 faulty macs.

Is it worth getting another one??
ANY ADVICE WOULD BE APPRECIATED

Is there anychance a firmware update could fix the issues?

 

[NC MacGuy]

I can watch movie or tv episodes in mp4, mov, or iTunes without issues.

AVi - divx in VLC will get the fan cranking a bit but still watchable.

Thought the second one was working fine?

You've already posted in another thread regarding getting a MB. It may be the best thing for you if you can't get an Air to do what you want.

 

[al82]

I WANT the air, im hoping i have had 2 faulty MBAs. If im left with no option i will get a MB.

 

[NC MacGuy]

I WANT the air, im hoping i have had 2 faulty MBAs. If im left with no option i will get a MB.

I know my MB & MBP also get hot and fans kick on during videos.

I don't watch videos on my Air, I use my iPod for that. The Air has been perfectly fine for me running Office app's, iWork, Mail, Safari with multiple windows open.

 

[al82]

I agree the air is perfect for those things. Would of been nice to be able to watch movies on long flights though and during my lunch breaks.

I had the MB before and never had any problems with videos, sure the fan would kick in but it wouldnt result in everything slowing down and videos stuttering.

I was hoping someone would tell me ive just been unlucky and the MBA is fine for watching videos on. Seems like it wasn't built for that so disappointed considering its such a nice looking machine.