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PHartnett

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 23, 2009
25
0
I've been a long time reader and this is my first post. The reason i am posting is to let people who are like myself and like to read forums to get real people's advice/reviews on things your wanting to buy.

I've recently purchased a Macbook Air 2.13 Ghz 128SSD... and i absolutely... ... love it.

Now i haven't came here to gush about it. (even though i would love too) i've watched a lot of videos and read a lot of peoples comments saying a lot of things such as 'Can't play youtube hd' 'Can't play 720p video'

Obviously... a lot of people come to a forum to post when they have problems, most people don't post when they don't have problems.

i've not done any legit testing on the air! as i don't really know how but i managed to get 4 videos (all different episodes of heroes playing in quicktime 720p in different window using spaces) and there was no noticeable lag! using iStat the fans stayed between 2495 and 2505. (ran test for about 20 minutes before i wanted to play on the air some more!)

Using safari youtube hd makes the air's fans ramp up to 4500 and depending on the video it was smooth or sometimes stutter. BUT. using activity monitor i noticed the issue was caused by the flash safari plug in running the cpu up to 90% and then safari itself running itself around 38% when i downloaded Camino a whole different story, watching 'Taking back sunday - Sink in to me on jimmy kimmel' in HD, Camino was around 48% cpu and HD playback was fine the fans sat around 2900 to around 3100 and i could hear the fan whisper with the music on mute but with the music from the video on i couldn't even hear the fan.

and if anybody is wondering about cpu heat the highest its gone is about 65 on average when intensive tasks are being ran... normally a cool 50.

I own a high-end 15inch macbook pro current spec and i feel the air is a much more 'useable' machine for everyday use... and by everyday i mean.
All of the above, 'Snappy' in Photoshop, iMovie for light editing work and most everyday tasks you throw at it... i would recommend the SSD version to everybody because that is what makes a big difference in speed, on basic side by sides on 'boot up and shut down' 'apps opening and quitting' 'saving high res images' the air has been very capable of keeping up with the pro.

Sorry about this post running long and being rather boring but if anybody is looking for some advice or wanting me to give them some actual detailed test they'd like conducted before buying... i'll be willing to help... as it really is a beautiful and powerful* machine


*powerful for what you "expect" from a apple ultraportable, haha.
 

alpinadvl

macrumors regular
Jan 24, 2008
134
44
interesting, thanks for posting.

2 questions :
1. are you running SL (snow leopard) ?

2. what build number is you MBA? (click on "About this Mac" in apple menu.... then click where it says "Version...." and click again until it says serial number...

for example, mine says "W8933..."

W8 is where it was built
9 is the year, as in 2009
33 is the week (33rd week out of 52 ;) )

alf
 

PHartnett

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 23, 2009
25
0
interesting, thanks for posting.

2 questions :
1. are you running SL (snow leopard) ?

2. what build number is you MBA? (click on "About this Mac" in apple menu.... then click where it says "Version...." and click again until it says serial number...

for example, mine says "W8933..."

W8 is where it was built
9 is the year, as in 2009
33 is the week (33rd week out of 52 ;) )

alf

Yep, Snow Leopard came pre-installed and i did all the software updates and performance update it asked me to.

and! mine says

W8938... and then a bunch of other letters and numbers! (thanks by the way for the info i didn't know about that!)

Paul.
 

Scottsdale

Suspended
Sep 19, 2008
4,473
283
U.S.A.
Congratulations and nice observations. Thanks for sharing.

People definitely need to observe PLUG-INS are not as efficient as running an app meant for HD video viewing.

Best wishes with your MBA.
 
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