New MBA owner requesting advise

[harmonica01]

Hey guys, my MBP 2.4 just crashed on me this afternoon at the library after multiple trips to the apple store since I bought it back in September. Well I needed a computer right now and asked my parents to spot me the cash and tried to get the 1.6 but Apple here in Houston was sold out, so I ended up getting the 1.8 as my PHD program present so I can't complain.

I am wanting to do all that I can to avoid the problems I had on the 2.4 which hopefully apple will just now replace and ill have it like new to sell to get an iMac in its place as I now have the portable air.

I just hooked it into the wall and have yet to start to up here in my office, other than the reinstalling OSX without the languages and printer drivers what can I do upfront to optimize its performance and longevity? I have read something about PRAM resetting (may have the term wrong sorry if I do) something with Shift+option+command+p key while it is shut down if I remember reading it earlier correctly.

Is there anyting else before I start her up and try this remote dvd read from this AMD I have at the office? Thanks for you help and recommendations and I do apologize for any repetitive threads, likesay am reading those as you read this.

 

[wordy]

1) Remove GarageBand/iMovie/iDVD etc.
2) Use XSlimmer and/or Delocalize and/or Monolingual or similar programs
3) Condition your new battery. Use it until it sleeps, let it equilibrate for a few hours or overnight, then fully recharge.

Don't worry about resetting PRAM unless you're having problems. If possible I'd say avoid migrating your settings from another Mac, and just start fresh. Lots of initial problems people have been having can be traced to migrating settings. I think you'll find Remote Disk works quite smoothly.

Hope that helps.

 

[harmonica01]

Why do I need to remove garageband and iMovie?

How much room does iMovie actually take up, cuse if I need to make a last minute edit to something it would be nice to have it on this air portable instead of having to drive back home to the iMac.

Thanks for the tip on garage band, almost forget about that thing since I never use it anyways. What are those other programs you mentioned?

 

[clayj]

Sounds like you should read this:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/427768/

 

[harmonica01]

yea so tried doing the remote disk, got it to the point to where on my spare computer it says "waiting for macbook air to boot up" or start...something like that.

50 minutes went by, and the dvd on my spare computer spinned down and the machine froze taking with it the new macbook air which I cannot get to start up now.

So yea, apple is really pissing me off now, that is now 6,000 i've spent on 2 computers in 6 months and neither of them work, whatever happened to the old reliability of the apple notebooks?

 

[Terwal]

have also a look at this... might find useful info:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/439495/

 

[harmonica01]

Cool cool, thanks.

Tried the remote disk clean install of leopard again both computers froze up but this time cd in host computer kept running. I got the software installed properly just something is going on; am aware was supposed to take a few hours but both computers froze couldnt even move my mouse last night.

At any rate, taking this MBA to the Apple Store again this evening after classes, will ask a tech rep load their image of OSX and leave off the items yall listed removing.

Am using the MBA right now at the library, everything runs really really fast, it's unbelievable! My 2.4 never was this fast even with 4gig ram - given im not doing much but typing, listening to lecture aac files and browsing safari - but still with brightness half way up battery is at 90% charge left and still showing 5:14 left on it, i'm very much impressed.

For those who tape lectures with wavepad: I tested this at the applestore with a 3 minute test yesterday before i bought the computer - was still getting just over 4 hours with it recording with max gain, my USB mic, high quality saving & while running pages typing a bunch of random letters for those 3 minutes. Of course I do not advise doing your noise cancellation nor refining and shrinking of the sound file on the battery LOL, tried doing that and fan got real pissy.

My everyday websites and logins for search databases with jstor and other places load INSTANTLY - not even the 2.8 8core mac pro in the offices here with 8 gig ram does that - can somebody explain? All I can figure is the SSD really allows these random tasks to run very efficiently. Naturally transfer rates over my USB cable or flash drive i carry is slow (spoiled to eSATA II interfaces) but am quite pleased and slowly rebuilding my faith in apple's laptops.

All I hope is Apple Techs can help me figure out why the fresh leopard install is freezing both computers i've tried it with now

 

[Consultant]

Cool cool, thanks.

Tried the remote disk clean install of leopard again both computers froze up but this time cd in host computer kept running. I got the software installed properly just something is going on; am aware was supposed to take a few hours but both computers froze couldnt even move my mouse last night.

At any rate, taking this MBA to the Apple Store again this evening after classes, will ask a tech rep load their image of OSX and leave off the items yall listed removing.

Am using the MBA right now at the library, everything runs really really fast, it's unbelievable! My 2.4 never was this fast even with 4gig ram - given im not doing much but typing, listening to lecture aac files and browsing safari - but still with brightness half way up battery is at 90% charge left and still showing 5:14 left on it, i'm very much impressed.

For those who tape lectures with wavepad: I tested this at the applestore with a 3 minute test yesterday before i bought the computer - was still getting just over 4 hours with it recording with max gain, my USB mic, high quality saving & while running pages typing a bunch of random letters for those 3 minutes. Of course I do not advise doing your noise cancellation nor refining and shrinking of the sound file on the battery LOL, tried doing that and fan got real pissy.

My everyday websites and logins for search databases with jstor and other places load INSTANTLY - not even the 2.8 8core mac pro in the offices here with 8 gig ram does that - can somebody explain? All I can figure is the SSD really allows these random tasks to run very efficiently. Naturally transfer rates over my USB cable or flash drive i carry is slow (spoiled to eSATA II interfaces) but am quite pleased and slowly rebuilding my faith in apple's laptops.

All I hope is Apple Techs can help me figure out why the fresh leopard install is freezing both computers i've tried it with now

SSD drive is extremely fast for small random read / writes compared to regular harddrives. Web pages typically consists of lots of small files, thus web surfing would be faster.

http://www.barefeats.com/macair1.html