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There are now more that 100 posts to this thread, which was started by someone who either (1) failed to think the matter through or (2) is a troll. Once again, I am reminded of the old but reliable Net expression, "Don't feed the trolls!" With that, I am taking my own advice and unsubscribing from the thread.
 
There are now more that 100 posts to this thread, which was started by someone who either (1) failed to think the matter through or (2) is a troll. Once again, I am reminded of the old but reliable Net expression, "Don't feed the trolls!" With that, I am taking my own advice and unsubscribing from the thread.

Good thinking old pal ! (if you're the old pal on your avatar)

5 pages to feed the troll, you girls overdone yourselves.

There are, however, a few people who tried to answer without insulting me. Those are not the fanboys obviously. Thanks to them, but even if Asus is a bad example, my point is still on : 5 hours (tops) is not enough for a "ultra..." whatever.

As for the internet psychology thing, well, everyone posting here, or even just reading it without posting is part of it. There are "fanboys", "whiners" (myself), "wise people giving advices on life", and trolls of course, which I am not, since my motivation was genuine.

As for now, I want to thanks all of you girls who made this thread a flourishing one. I'm going to class, without a MBA. Too bad Steve chose the hipness over practicality.
 
Good thinking old pal ! (if you're the old pal on your avatar)

5 pages to feed the troll, you girls overdone yourselves.

There are, however, a few people who tried to answer without insulting me. Those are not the fanboys obviously. Thanks to them, but even if Asus is a bad example, my point is still on : 5 hours (tops) is not enough for a "ultra..." whatever.

As for the internet psychology thing, well, everyone posting here, or even just reading it without posting is part of it. There are "fanboys", "whiners" (myself), "wise people giving advices on life", and trolls of course, which I am not, since my motivation was genuine.

As for now, I want to thanks all of you girls who made this thread a flourishing one. I'm going to class, without a MBA. Too bad Steve chose the hipness over practicality.

It's not called an ultra-battery laptop, it's called ultra portable. You crack me up. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Apple has sold thousands and thousands... clearly there's a market of people who want a "hip" laptop over one with 8 hours of battery. Where's the Asus forums saying how amazing and sexi they are?!?!?! HAH
 
Good thinking old pal ! (if you're the old pal on your avatar)

5 pages to feed the troll, you girls overdone yourselves.

There are, however, a few people who tried to answer without insulting me. Those are not the fanboys obviously. Thanks to them, but even if Asus is a bad example, my point is still on : 5 hours (tops) is not enough for a "ultra..." whatever.

As for the internet psychology thing, well, everyone posting here, or even just reading it without posting is part of it. There are "fanboys", "whiners" (myself), "wise people giving advices on life", and trolls of course, which I am not, since my motivation was genuine.

As for now, I want to thanks all of you girls who made this thread a flourishing one. I'm going to class, without a MBA. Too bad Steve chose the hipness over practicality.

An ultraportable is a full or nearly full power laptop that is smaller than 14" or even 12"

The MBA 11 is vastly closer to a full powered laptop than the EEE, also note that the 11" has a full size keyboard which the EEE lacks.
If you expect to do anything more than surfing the web 1.0 (which means no using flash) or using word/powerpoint (which includes Excel) it's going to be slow going and kill your battery life on the EEE

now if you want to do more than that feel free to pick up the MBA which+charger is lighter than the EEE and can do actual work
 
No kidding. Even on the trains in the bay area (CalTrain) they have tables with charger plugs.... my iPhone lasts about 3 hours when using constant data... my Virgin Mobile Mifi lasts about 4 hours per charge on constant data... so by the time the laptop dies, the peripherals are already dead anyhow.

At the end of the day, if you need more than 5 hours, the Air isn't for you. The pro will get you 10 hours. If you need a 500 GB hard drive, the air isn't for you, the pro is. If you need a 17" screen, the pro isn't for you.

Bottom line... clearly the response from people is that the 11" air is amazing. I think you're the minority if you disagree. It's not like apple is alienating you. They have the pro line which focuses on the max battery on the market today.

Yes, there are chargers everywhere now! There are chargers next to every single seat in the trains in my area too :)
 
As for now, I want to thanks all of you girls who made this thread a flourishing one. I'm going to class, without a MBA. Too bad Steve chose the hipness over practicality.

Actually it has nothing to do with hipness and is completely a practicality trade. Size and weight are in direct competition with battery life. Both affect practicality for different reasons but gaining on one means sacrificing on another. Clearly, they had a size and weight goal and the battery life at that goal was acceptable.
 
Amusing

It is like trying not to look at a car wreck. Several pages of posts later, and it dawns on me that for the original poster, his disappointment is real, no matter what we think. I have a few grey hairs, and my first portable was the size of a large suitcase, and could not get out of its own way. Having worked with some of the latest NetBooks on the market, I can kind of see how we have all been somewhat trained to keep score by a limited number of specifications. To this day, my eyes are still drawn first to processor, memory, storage, and battery life. Weight is somewhat of a recent addition to the equation, as it seems like most products all hovered in the same range for a very long time.

I think today's blending of technologies require a bit more of a complete view of the combination of features. The number of Cores, Quality of Display, Size of Keyboard, and Storage Type and Size can certainly converge into a product that seems to be more than the Sum of its parts.

I have the 11.6" MBA, and also have a Toshiba NetBook (NB205). The Toshiba is rated at 9+ hours of battery life, but I can hardly stand to use it for more than an hour or so. The battery life also seems to be rated for the device sitting completely idle. The storage is slow, and the Ram is also limited. The trackpad is impossibly tiny, but they did take a page out of the Apple Book on the keyboard, which while quite cramped, does have good key separation. No backlight by the way, but then only my 15" MBP has had it, of all the Notebooks I have carried. The MBA is really the first Notebook in a long while that I consider usable as a laptop. The storage is blazing fast, and even makes up for a little of the memory limitation, as paging to and from storage is much much faster. The keyboard is a pleasure to use, and the display is very accetable for most tasks. I have invested in all of the different Display Port cables to handle any external display need, and they all work effortlessly.

This Ultra Portable class of notebook did not even interest me until I got my iPad, which reduced the Media role of my Notebook, and even began to limit how often I take it out of the bag. That made me look at the weight I was carrying, and consider whether I really needed all that Horsepower at my fingertips.

While the OP's disappointment is real, and he chose to vent that on a site with many fans of the technology that disappointed him, one can only imagine that he has left similar vents on all of the other products out there that miss the mark by such a large margin of error.

Peace!
 
Since we are sharing things that no one else cares about, I'm going to have a Turkey sandwich on 12 grain bread for lunch along with an bannana.
I can't believe you sold out and went for the 12 grain. You do know that 16 grain bread is available? Obviously it's a little heavier, so to keep the weight the same, you won't be able to stuff as much Turkey in there, but it's 4 more grains of hipness that you should never have passed by.
 
The only thing going through my mind when I read the title of this post was..

Jesus Christ, here we go again.

The content of the post didn't change my mind.
 
I have been on airplanes traveling across the world, on trains, on busses and never have I had the need for more than five hours of battery. There are power-jacks everywhere nowadays and I dont see five hours of battery as a problem.

If you need to use the computer for longer periods you should probably pick the 13" inch anyway. I myself are going for the 11" for use when ever I need a small computer, and when I need more power I'll plug it in.

Starting a thread with "Shame on you Apple !" for your own personal reasons is nothing but weird and sad.
 
Shame on me !!!

Shame on me !!!

I got the 11' MBA.

Battery goes second after the OS. And i'm not getting a PC.

And it's a beauty.

:eek:
 
RIDICULOUS original post. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There are plenty that will (and have), and they're right on for doing so.
 
Fanboys to the rescue.

Wow, shame on me. That gallon of milk stuff says a lot about your priorities. Who wants a shiny pretty computer to show off at Starbucks? :D

Now, who's REALLY using a notebook all the time ? Students. On a campus, 5 hours of battery life is just laughable.

Double that, Apple, and I'll be a happy customer. We need a day-long battery, that's not so difficult to understand.

And I'm not going Asus, because it's Windows. And not iPad, because I need a keyboard constantly.

get a proper sized notebook then, ie MBP15 or 17
 
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There are now more that 100 posts to this thread, which was started by someone who either (1) failed to think the matter through or (2) is a troll. Once again, I am reminded of the old but reliable Net expression, "Don't feed the trolls!" With that, I am taking my own advice and unsubscribing from the thread.

Well said! What a waste of bandwidth! ;)
 
May I suggest a hypermac battery pack? It's pretty cool, looks great, relatively small, and charges forever. I don't know if it's already compatible with the new macbook air but it was with the old one.
 
RIDICULOUS original post. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There are plenty that will (and have), and they're right on for doing so.

Do you know how to read ?

What is wrong with you people ?

I've bought the MBA ! And I'm happy with it ! That's all I wanted to say. :mad:
 
1. a full-size keyboard. You know, for typing. The ASUS doesn't give you that...it gives you the same keyboard as the iPad basically.

I'm late to this thread, but wow. Just wow. I had to comment on how silly this sounds.

OP, glad you're happy with the MBA, and as stated before, yeah, you don't want to make comments like this on MacRumors.
 
This Ultra Portable class of notebook did not even interest me until I got my iPad, which reduced the Media role of my Notebook, and even began to limit how often I take it out of the bag. That made me look at the weight I was carrying, and consider whether I really needed all that Horsepower at my fingertips.

Exactly the same with me.
 
Do you know how to read ?

What is wrong with you people ?

I've bought the MBA ! And I'm happy with it ! That's all I wanted to say. :mad:
Against my own better judgment and after unsubscribing from this thread, I came back to it yesterday morning and again this morning. I will post just this one more time to say that I am happy for you that you bought an 11 inch MBA, you won't be sorry. I would have told you so yesterday but your post failed to make clear to me at least that you had bought an MBA.

Don't worry too much about the 11 inch MBA's battery life. When I am working emails, surfing the Web, and not much else, my 13 inch MBA customarily gets at least 6 or 7 hours from a charge and if I am using it only off an on during the course of the day, I can easily go from first thing in the morning until bed time on one charge.

Battery life takes a hard hit when you are using a bunch of Flash enabled sites, particularly streaming video from, for example, Hulu or Netflix. My grandson has a 13 inch MBP. Although its battery is rated at 10 hours, if he is dong a bunch of streaming video, he can get only about 4 hours from it. I learned that lessen a couple of nights ago when I watched several hours of Netflix streamed videos on my 13 inch MBA, after first having spend about an hour on another Flash enabled site. As a result of the strain I was putting on it, my battery indicator turned red after less than 4 hours. No Macbook, MBP, or MBA, running OS X is going to have the kind of battery life that the iPad and other iOS devices will have. The upside, of course, is that a real OS X computer has the ability to do exponentially more than any iOS device. The point of this is to urge you not to be hung up on your 11 inch MBA's sometimes relatively short battery life and celebrate its many strengths. Good luck!
 
Shame on me !!!

I got the 11' MBA.

Battery goes second after the OS. And i'm not getting a PC.

And it's a beauty.

:eek:

Congrats!

I love my new 11inch air. I fly a fair amount and it opens on a tray table. Battery life isn't an issue, even in airports, there are power outlets everywhere. Between that and keeping a power inverter in the car, five hours of battery life isn't an issue.
 
...after seeing the new MBA's (11 & 13), compared to the last 3 MBA models I'm actually interested in getting one... my whitebook and HP DM4 are still meeting my needs so it will be another 2 generations before I actually do but the MBA finally actually intrigued me... hopefully in 2 more generations, the CPU's will also be where I'd like them to be as well:p
 
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Apple 1 is still selling at $212,267. Shame on you apple. I wouldnt take a first gen pc even if it offered for free:D
 
Agreed on bad choice of comparison

My other half has a Timeline 1810TZ, 1.3GHz SU4100, 4GB Ram 250GB HDD, 11.6" display. HDMI out, 3x USB, wired ethernet. It regularly turns in 7 hours on wireless with display brightness at a decent level. Bought a year ago for £449 quid, versus 11" MBA 4GB/64 I ordered earlier this week at £930

She gets on fine with it, though with a usage pattern that sees it treated as a souped up netbook with a larger display (and with a bit of a price hike for the privilege) not as a primary computer replacement.

With a sub £500 price tag I'd reckon its a lot easier to justify a machine of this level as a secondary purchase, whereas at just under £1000 more folks seem to be swithering over every megahertz and megabyte in an attempt to convince themselves it can be their primary machine (and for a lot of those doing that its going to turn out more in hope than realistic expectation).

Where it falls down for me is in the weight difference - the 1810 is half as much again as the 11/4BG/64GB MBA. That makes one a practical proposition for all day long hand carrying, whilst the other one is not and would be living in a backpack. By going for the cheaper option I'd effectively be paying myself £490 to put up with the hassle of having a backpack with me at all times, thats less than a tenner a week in my pocket over the course of a year, and for the sake of a tenner a week Id rather give that particular 'pleasure' a miss :)

In saying that I don't need access to wired ethernet and don't need access to any more than 2 or 3 hours of battery powered up-time on any given call out which gives it a good margin of leeway.

If I did then it would be a much more difficult choice - grabbing the 1810tz on its own every morning as I go out the door, or grabbing an MBA and a power supply and an ethernet dongle (by which point the MBA would be getting stuffed into a backpack anyway regardless of its weight).

I need a machine like the Timeline.

Can't justify the Air's ridiculous price and I'd struggle to use OSX everyday.

Something in a similar form for less than £500 would be ideal.

Whats the current equivalent?
 
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