MBA refresh/Sandy Bridge/Lion and battery life

[radiohead14]

i'm looking to get the current 11" once the refresh came out, but now contemplating if i should just get the new one. how much of a battery life improvement will we see with this combination? i read that SB is more power efficient, but what about Lion? will we see a higher capacity battery cell also? if the new MBA can reach at least 7hrs, then i'll be at the 5th Ave. NY store day one.

also, how low will the current MBA 11" (4gb model) price go?

 

[FX4568]

You think anyone of us would be here if we knew the answers?
Its pure speculation. No one knows how much price will drop.

For the lower Watt thing, it doesnt always mean that lower watt means more power efficient. Since heat in concentrated in an area, fans will start up quicker and last longer which will also suck battery out.

 

[radiohead14]

You think anyone of us would be here if we knew the answers?
Its pure speculation. No one knows how much price will drop.

For the lower Watt thing, it doesnt always mean that lower watt means more power efficient. Since heat in concentrated in an area, fans will start up quicker and last longer which will also suck battery out.

well there are actual members here who have educated guesses based on outside info.. like how we could look at the current 2nd gen SB notebooks with similar size. and i know there are testers of the lion gold master here i was hoping to chime in, since the OS is a big part of power management.

as for the fans.. that's not always the case. look at the HP DM1z, where users have reported that the fans are constantly on, yet they get an average of 6-7hrs battery life

 

[calvol]

Battery life could well be lower with SB with all else equal. Every time TurboBoost kicks in, the chip power consumption exceeds its TDP rating, and TB will tend to kick in more often than with the C2D/320M combo, because the SB IGP is more easily overtaxed and is tied in to the TB algorithm.

 

[jackyyeow]

well there are actual members here who have educated guesses based on outside info..

Educated guesses are still guesses, and are still speculation. Nobody will know *which* hardware/CPU will Apple use for their upcoming MBA.

 

[PaulWog]

i'm looking to get the current 11" once the refresh came out, but now contemplating if i should just get the new one. how much of a battery life improvement will we see with this combination? i read that SB is more power efficient, but what about Lion? will we see a higher capacity battery cell also? if the new MBA can reach at least 7hrs, then i'll be at the 5th Ave. NY store day one.

also, how low will the current MBA 11" (4gb model) price go?

Sounds like you should simply wait. It's likely that the refresh will occur on the 14th.

It's almost a certainty that the refresh will occur by the end of this month.

The reason why the refresh simply won't happen at a later month such as August or October is because Intel just released their new Sandy Bridge processors... there's no reason for Apple to wait until October (or whatever month it would be to be a full 12-month cycle), as they won't be waiting for newer ultra-portable processor technology... because there won't be any new technology between now and then.

 

[onthecouchagain]

It'll be either this coming Tuesday or next, most likely, when we'll know all the answers.

I wonder if Apple ever checks these forums/websites and enjoy all our speculating.

 

[hcho3]

I doubt 11 MBA will reach 7 hours of battery life.

Also, MBA is very aggressively priced with SSD. Most of laptops come with HDD and not SSD.

Don't expect price cuts. It will still be based at 99 dollars. I don't expect any updates from apple on MBA other than these three things.

1. Sandy Bridge
2. HD Face time Camera
3. Thunderbolt Port

 

[radiohead14]

Educated guesses are still guesses, and are still speculation. Nobody will know *which* hardware/CPU will Apple use for their upcoming MBA.

well isn't it pretty much Core i5 and i7? and yea.. that's the whole point of this forum isn't it? to talk about speculations? and i was asking more about SB's relation to Lion. since there have been a few people who's already tested Lion with the SB MBP, i was hoping they could chime in and maybe give an idea as to how Lion's power management is.

I doubt 11 MBA will reach 7 hours of battery life.

how come? when there are ultra low voltage SB chips now:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20072665-64/intel-adds-sandy-bridge-chips-for-ultraslim-laptops/?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-BusinessTech

if the MBP can reach 8hrs (granted they have bigger spacing for more cells), i don't see why it's not possible for the new MBA with these new SBs to be able to reach 7, if the current (old) C2D can reach 5.. and that's with the Nvidia chip.. wouldn't the IGP in SB be more energy conservative?

 

[Duke15]

well isn't it pretty much Core i5 and i7? and yea.. that's the whole point of this forum isn't it? to talk about speculations? and i was asking more about SB's relation to Lion. since there have been a few people who's already tested Lion with the SB MBP, i was hoping they could chime in and maybe give an idea as to how Lion's power management is.



how come? when there are ultra low voltage SB chips now:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20072665-64/intel-adds-sandy-bridge-chips-for-ultraslim-laptops/?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-BusinessTech

if the MBP can reach 8hrs (granted they have bigger spacing for more cells), i don't see why it's not possible for the new MBA with these new SBs to be able to reach 7, if the current (old) C2D can reach 5.. and that's with the Nvidia chip.. wouldn't the IGP in SB be more energy conservative?

Yes its pretty certain that it will be i5 and i5 but which i5 and i7 is still very much in the air as there are several chips which they could choose from, some we knew about and some apparently being released in the near future.

The current CPU in the air is a ULV/LV chip it only uses 17w, the 320m uses about 8, for the 11" it uses a 10W chip; or somehting, the watage should stay the same, cant see them changing it now, will mostlikly be a 25w in the 13" and 17w in the 11"(atleast i think so) the difference will be in powermanagement by the chip, apparently SB is better at it. Also if they use the 17W in the 13" it doesnt necessarily mean better battery life as HellHammer has pointed out in several threads.