New 2011 refresh MBA questions

[JamieVB]

Hi, I am new to mac other then iPods and IPhones however I am returning bk to uni and was going to purchase an iPad 2 untill I tried one and witnessed the horrendous touch typing on them , now my attention has turned to the MBA. I realise that many of these questions may have been answered however please could u help me and not point me a billion breads as I am very greatfull of your expert advice!
I currently have a home base that runs i7 x fired amd cards and 6 gigs 1866 DDR, this would purely be for university work and maybe a little gaming when I get board. I am itrested mainly about the following questions.

Has anyone run autocad / archcad / photoshop on these and how did it go?

Has anyone run league of legends on these , and example frame rates / settings?

Same question as above for Heroes of newerth?

Same question as above for starcraft 2?

I realise apple states a battery life of the product but what does he product actually get from he battery both in use and standby, as I probably wouldn't want my charger at uni?

I realise the MBA is no gaming god and won't do anything close to my base, however I believe the MBA and the new asus ultrabook style are the products where technology should be progressing to emulate , thanks for all your helpful comments , and just to clarify I do not want or consider the MacBook or MacBook pro an option

Ah one last question? 64 gb enough or should I go for 128'minimum , does the os and page file take up much? as windows 7 and page is occupying almost 28gb in my base ssd.

 

[Hellhammer]

Real world battery life tests

I can't answer the other questions but if you are going to run Windows in Boot Camp and plan on installing some games, then 128GB is better. 64GB SSD has 49GB of empty space after first boot so 64GB may not be enough.

 

[JamieVB]

Hi thanks but I intend only to use mac is lion on the device

 

[Hellhammer]

Hi thanks but I intend only to use mac is lion on the device

Ahh. Then 64GB should be fine as OS X takes only ~5GB. As I said, you will have roughly 49GB of empty space which should be enough since you have another computer with more storage.

 

[Vazkor]

If I were you I'd go with 128 GB anyway. It's not TOO expensive. Also, 4 GB min.

 

[orfeas0]

If I were you I'd go with 128 GB anyway. It's not TOO expensive. Also, 4 GB min.

+1.

Also, League of legends only runs in windows, so if you want to play that on the mba you need boot camp. Well there's a mac buggy-beta version as well that noone can play

 

[love my mac]

Back-lit Keypad

Does anyone think the backlit keypad will come back on the MBA, until it does I will be firmly seated on the sidelines...

 

[57004]

If I were you I'd go with 128 GB anyway. It's not TOO expensive. Also, 4 GB min.

If you go for the 4GB, remember that the hibernate file will take up an extra 2GB over the standard configuration since it matches the RAM size. So that will be 47 left (and probably even less after Lion's recovery image).

So I'd also advise 128GB in that case (and of course to wait for the upcoming refresh)

 

[peskaa]

Does anyone think the backlit keypad will come back on the MBA, until it does I will be firmly seated on the sidelines...

Or, as a radical suggestion, learn to touch type. Backlit keyboards are unlikely to be coming back for battery life reasons.

 

[hcho3]

Backlit Keyboard ain't coming back... for battery life reasons.

 

[Cali3350]

battery reasons? What? Backlit keyboards dont add a single bit of power consumption, all you do is mirror the LCD panels light under the keys.

 

[nutjob]

Or, as a radical suggestion, learn to touch type. Backlit keyboards are unlikely to be coming back for battery life reasons.

Or why not just learn to see in the dark? Why go to all that trouble? There isn't a battery issue because the keyboard leds emit relatively little light and take very little power. The problem was that Apple couldn't be bothered squeezing in the led lighting in the first version and the will most likely add it in a future vesion.

 

[peskaa]

battery reasons? What? Backlit keyboards dont add a single bit of power consumption, all you do is mirror the LCD panels light under the keys.

Seriously? You think that is how it is done? Keyboard backlights use LEDs for the light source, there's no way of somehow getting the monitor backlight under the keys. The grid of LEDs will use power - sure, not much, but everything counts in terms of getting the very last little bit of juice from a battery.

EDIT: Also, if it was coming from the backlights, how would you be able to independently adjust the keyboard brightness without impacting on the screen brightness?

Of course, there's also the fact that Apple might not be able to squeeze the backlights in to the MBA at all.

 

[jclardy]

battery reasons? What? Backlit keyboards dont add a single bit of power consumption, all you do is mirror the LCD panels light under the keys.

I don't think that is how it works, at least not on current gen MBP's. The key backlight can be adjusted brighter or darker than the display backlight, and can even be used when the display backlight is completely off.

So they definitely have another light source under the keys. I doubt it uses a lot of power though.

 

[krimp]

i have read a lot of these forums on should i wait for the refresh or just buy now, well my circustance is this. im buying a mac for the first time, im set on the mba for size weight and power balance. i will really only use it for work which is email, web, office (i will use iworks) and wouldnt mind a game although im not big on gaming. so i have set my sights on the mba 13 128gb possibly upgrade to 4mb of ram.

so the only reason to wait would be the new processor which i dont think will affect me too much. but wouldnt the downside be the loss of the Nvidia card? thats my dilema, also that i might just get a bargin runout price on the old stock!

any thoughts?

 

[imHappy]

omg, pretty much all my questions i wanted to ask, are in this thread!

anyone that played league of legends even in windows, what are the fps?

also for autocad? how well does it handle it?

 

[peskaa]

i have read a lot of these forums on should i wait for the refresh or just buy now, well my circustance is this. im buying a mac for the first time, im set on the mba for size weight and power balance. i will really only use it for work which is email, web, office (i will use iworks) and wouldnt mind a game although im not big on gaming. so i have set my sights on the mba 13 128gb possibly upgrade to 4mb of ram.

so the only reason to wait would be the new processor which i dont think will affect me too much. but wouldnt the downside be the loss of the Nvidia card? thats my dilema, also that i might just get a bargin runout price on the old stock!

any thoughts?

For office/web browsing/email tasks, then you're better off waiting for the new models, and I'd hope that the 4GB of RAM is standard in those machine as well, but have to wait and see for that.

The HD 3000 will do the odd bit of gaming, but it really depends on what you'll be playing, and what you accept as good graphics etc. The HD 3000 is definitely shaping up to be slower, but we don't know how much by.

 

[leftywamumonkey]

For office/web browsing/email tasks, then you're better off waiting for the new models, and I'd hope that the 4GB of RAM is standard in those machine as well, but have to wait and see for that.

The HD 3000 will do the odd bit of gaming, but it really depends on what you'll be playing, and what you accept as good graphics etc. The HD 3000 is definitely shaping up to be slower, but we don't know how much by.

You should look at this thread a bit, it may answer some of your autocad and photoshop concerns. Click Me

 

[endhalf]

Why are people still asking questions about product that haven't been out yet? Why? Search the forum, I posted cpu comparison, you can find GPU comparison with Samsung 9 series... That should provide you as good answers as you can have considering you can't know for sure these things until product is released...

 

[ozthegweat]

The grid of LEDs will use power - sure, not much, but everything counts in terms of getting the very last little bit of juice from a battery.

Having a backlit keyboard doesn't use any power at all. Using that backlit keyboard, however, does. But everyone who's concerned about it impacting battery life can just turn it off.

All the battery life tests Apple does are surely done with keyboard backlighting turned off. So battery life will stay exactly the same.

It could be, however, that the MBA is such a tight fit, that there's simply not enough room for it.

Regarding all the shortcomings of this first gen of the new MBA: this is typical Apple behavior. Release it with somewhat underwhelming specs (2GB RAM, no BL keyboard etc.) to make a bigger profit on the first generation to recoup development costs. People buy it anyway, simply because it's new, and even have an incentive to buy the second generation which does away with the shortcomings of the first. Typical Apple behavior. Happened before, happens now, will happen in the future.