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Matt Hardy Author

Level 1

145 points

low battery life i7 macbook air

I've come to the conclusion that the i7 MacBook Air is not a 7hr battery, unless you just use it for doing nothing...

I blame Lion, and specifically this top report may show something...

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Processes: 91 total, 2 running, 3 stuck, 86 sleeping, 416 threads 20:30:42

Load Avg: 0.94, 0.74, 0.65 CPU usage: 2.54% user, 3.93% sys, 93.51% idle

SharedLibs: 92M resident, 0B data, 21M linkedit.

MemRegions: 39019 total, 1283M resident, 28M private, 357M shared.

PhysMem: 1216M wired, 1244M active, 287M inactive, 2747M used, 1347M free.

VM: 223G vsize, 1337M framework vsize, 1817588(0) pageins, 190372(0) pageouts.

Networks: packets: 2437552/2187M in, 1967910/427M out.

Disks: 1057295/15G read, 944723/40G written.

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See Load, with bascially no CPU procees reported, over 90% free.

See pageins/outs

It's as if everything is consuming more resources and I have not changed my usage at all, text editing, websurfing.

I'd be interested in going back to Snow Leopard and see if it's better on power, at this rate I am really not happy on the train rides...

Power not guaranteed and the 2-2.5 hours i am getting from my brand new i7 is not good enough.

Is the i5 better? Seems to me not so different specs.

Comments welcome.

MacBook Air 13", Mac OS X (10.6.6), 1.86GHz 4GB

Posted on Aug 10, 2011 11:38 AM

17 replies

Nov 30, 2011 4:38 PM in response to Matt Hardy

I agree with you. I have received my MBA yesterday and surprised to see that battery life is no more than 2 hrs. I compared battery life of MBA with old Asus N10J which I am using since last two and half years and surprised to see the difference. Assus was still 40% on battery and MBA went flat using almost same applications. It is rediculus to say to reduce backlight and run specific application to prolong battery life. what is the use to spent almost $2K and require plug in to power?

I am frustrated and could not find any solution other than simply return the machine and look after other option.

Matt Hardy Author

Level 1

145 points

Dec 31, 2011 2:01 AM in response to manzoorfromkarratha

Amazing that you guys have written so much, battery life is an issue.

I've settled on 3.5 hrs from my MBA i7 - it's basically not great but have no time to mess around reinstalling system at the moment. As I think it is OS issue for the most part.

I'm also getting GPU freak outs and having overheat problems on CPU that only solve after a restart, or quit all apps - totally frustrating.

Well, maybe one day I will reformat the works but what a nightmare!

Just for a lousy extra 30minutes of battery and not even guaranteed.

Are there any plans for a Lioness - an OS version without all the fluff?

low battery life i7 macbook air