OK, I took the leap to Snow Leopard - so so results.

[nph]

I have a rev B, SSD. So far it is ok as far as the fan goes and memory use is only up slightly.
However temperature, even on a flat surface' is around 50 idling and surfing safari I am 60+ and this is noticeably higher than I was in Leopard. Btw surfing means no flash only reading forums like this one.

Battery the same or actually lower...

So far I am not impressed with the upgrade to Snow Leopard. I was really hoping that would make the MBA really useable with lower temps and longer battery time.

Will try SMC reset and see what happens. If that doesn't help I will roll back to Leopard using my Time Machine backup.

Btw, If I do an erase and restore (which I understand is needed f I go back to Leopard) can I format my HD to have a Windows partition? Or does the format need to match TimeMachine exactly?

 

[tsubikiddo]

I have finally got a chance to test SL battery endurance today
and it actually went down
(same tasks as I was using 10.5.1 - 10.5.8)

not really impressed

 

[itou]

i'm having the same problem.
fans are on constantly which is probably why battery life is suffering.
smc fix has not been useful. i hope they come out with a solution soon.

 

[still in school]

because we needed another thread...

 

[MWPULSE]

because we needed another thread...

lol.. yup apparently so, i have given up posting in such threads. Gets boring after a while tbh lol

PTP

 

[LAS.mac]

Questions:

when you guys talk of decreased battery performance, which is the timing you have now and had before SL upgrade?

and:

Were those clean installs, or upgrades on Leopard?

 

[stockscalper]

I have an older MBP that I upgraded to Snow Leopard hoping it would give me a speed bump. It's not faster than Leopard and my battery life is less. I never used to hear my fans and now I hear them a lot. All Snow Leopard did for me was free up some hard drive space. Other than that in my opinion it's a total dud. No wonder Apple priced it at only $29.

 

[gwangung]

I have an older MBP that I upgraded to Snow Leopard hoping it would give me a speed bump. It's not faster than Leopard and my battery life is less. I never used to hear my fans and now I hear them a lot. All Snow Leopard did for me was free up some hard drive space. Other than that in my opinion it's a total dud. No wonder Apple priced it at only $29.

I'd take a small wager that there's some interactive effects with older third party software that might be behind this.

Whether or not that's Apple's fault ultimately, I don't know, but your experience isn't quite universal.

 

[Macjames]

My Rev A Air is noticeably quicker with SL, battery remains the same.

 

[mrgossett]

I have the Rev. B 1.86 SSD MBA. My temps also seemed to be running somewhat higher with Safari and Snow Leopard, until I installed Click to Flash. What a difference that little plug-in made! My temps while surfing the net rarely ever get above 50C now, and the fans stay about 2500 rpm, even while watching YouTube videos (which now play in H264 in better quality than flash). Overall speed seems to be slightly faster than Leopard, although startup time is a bit longer. (The SSD makes everything really snappy anyway.)