New 2012 13" MBA Owner - Having Technical issues

mad_griff · Jun 27, 2012

Hey guys! Let me premise by saying thank you for having a resource such as this for us newbs to go to. As corny as it sounds, I have wanted a mac laptop ever since I was a kid and saw the movie hackers. I finally got a Macbook Air this last week (Base 13" Model with external superdrive and HD purchase). I love the design, the screen, the OS, and most of all the weight. I am having some issues however. Hopefully, with your help, I can get these straightened out and enjoy my MBA.

So here are the issues:

1) I literally just got the MBA last friday. Yesterday, while at school I was running Safari and Mail. The MBA was unplugged. I had a few school websites open when I closed the lid and put the Air in sleep mode. An hour later or so I opened the Air and it was virtually unresponsive. I had to restart it, and after that it seemed to work fine. My best guess is the computer froze up due to the high volume of emails it was downloading from my Gmail server. But it does seem that the battery has not been the same since the incident.

2) I called apple tech support and there really wasnt a lot they could advise me on since the crash was an isolated incident. Since that incident I took all my mail accounts offline and just started using gmail in chrome. Today, after speaking with applecare, I tried to bring my Gmail account online. The computer didnt slow down, but I was unable to quit Mail. I tried to restart and it wouldnt let me due to not being able to quit mail. I brought my gmail account back offline and had to force quit Mail in order to restart. The computer was plugged in to an outlet during this process. I have a ton of mail on my gmail account, but I would think the MBA could handle it. This concerns me a bit...

3) I decided to look more into my battery situation this evening as well since I didnt feel like I was getting optimal battery life after the "incident". The battery drained from 45% to 8% in a couple hours of light internet usage (no videos) and the screen on roughly 40% brightness.I did some research and downloaded Coconut and iStat. Coconut states that my Batteries current capacity is at 96% for a 3 week old mac and 3 load cycles. It seems that a 4% attrition rate with only a week of use is a little high. The iStat reading is at 97% health and this seems to be a little discouraging as well. Is this normal?

4) I do not know much about CPU's and SSD's but the iStat temp gauge seemed to tell me they were running a little hot. According to iStat, my SSD was running at 119 Degrees F and my CPU at 128 Degrees F. Are these readings high? It seems like the fan has been kicking on a lot lately.

5) I downloaded Disk Speed test and ran this as well. With no applications running in the background I averaged 244 mb/s write speed and 400mb/s read. These seem to be significantly slower than a lot of the benchmarks I found, and the claimed 500mb/s speed. I looked into it and I have the Toshiba SSD :/ but I didnt think it was that big of a performance drop.

So I may just be paranoid and babying my new Mac too much. I also do not want to come across as a whiner. I work incredibly hard and do not have a lot of extra $ to spare, so this purchase was a big deal for me. This also could be all chalked up to ignorance with the new system, who knows. Thats why I am here

Any advice on the SSD speed, CPU, Mail issue, Battery Life etc would be great. I am within my return window and could always take it back for a new Air if you guys think that is advisable. Thank you in advance!

P.S.- I didnt go with the MBP because it was too heavy to carry around all day with my textbooks. I tried one and that 1.5 lbs really does make a difference!

Nethfel · Jun 27, 2012

Hi, welcome to the forums!

mad_griff said:
2) I called apple tech support and there really wasnt a lot they could advise me on since the crash was an isolated incident. Since that incident I took all my mail accounts offline and just started using gmail in chrome. Today, after speaking with applecare, I tried to bring my Gmail account online. The computer didnt slow down, but I was unable to quit Mail. I tried to restart and it wouldnt let me due to not being able to quit mail. I brought my gmail account back offline and had to force quit Mail in order to restart. The computer was plugged in to an outlet during this process. I have a ton of mail on my gmail account, but I would think the MBA could handle it. This concerns me a bit...

Ok, the first time you sync up mail, it WILL take some time and DON'T quit the application - for one thing, it won't really properly quit until it's done. If you have a ton of email in your gmail account you may just want to start it and walk away for a bit (leave it plugged in tho while doing it, no point in draining the battery doing this). this can also make the system feel somewhat less responsive, especially if mail is in the foreground. After it's properly synced Mail shouldn't be quite as problematical.

3) I decided to look more into my battery situation this evening as well since I didnt feel like I was getting optimal battery life after the "incident". The battery drained from 45% to 8% in a couple hours of light internet usage (no videos) and the screen on roughly 40% brightness.I did some research and downloaded Coconut and iStat. Coconut states that my Batteries current capacity is at 96% for a 3 week old mac and 3 load cycles. It seems that a 4% attrition rate with only a week of use is a little high. The iStat reading is at 97% health and this seems to be a little discouraging as well. Is this normal?

That seems a little quick to me on the battery drain - did you have mail or anything else running in the background? That is a bit odd on the capacity unless the software is misreading the data on the battery - but it seems your battery is draining somewhat fast. I know my 2011 11" MBA which is 17 weeks old shows 100% capacity (actually, coconut is showing a higher current cap then the design cap which makes me wonder how accurate it is)

4) I do not know much about CPU's and SSD's but the iStat temp gauge seemed to tell me they were running a little hot. According to iStat, my SSD was running at 119 Degrees F and my CPU at 128 Degrees F. Are these readings high? It seems like the fan has been kicking on a lot lately.

That's not too terribly hot for the mobiles, plus it may be a bit off from reality, not sure. My MBA that only has istat, iTunes (not doing anything, just open) and a web page open fluctuates my cpu from 105 - 130. Yours might be a little high, but I don't know what all you actually have running in the background (like were you letting your mail process?) Now my SSD is much cooler then yours sitting idle (<100). Usually I set to deg C instead of deg F since that's what I'm more used to seeing when it comes to comp temps. Yours might be running hotter then normal, but without knowing more about your configuration and what you are actually running in the background and foreground it's impossible to say for sure.

5) I downloaded Disk Speed test and ran this as well. With no applications running in the background I averaged 244 mb/s write speed and 400mb/s read. These seem to be significantly slower than a lot of the benchmarks I found, and the claimed 500mb/s speed. I looked into it and I have the Toshiba SSD :/ but I didnt think it was that big of a performance drop.

Can't really comment on this but a 400MB/s (remember Mb = megabits, MB = megabytes which is what I'm sure your actually seeing) read speed isn't bad. What size SSD do you have and which Toshiba SSD model do you have? It's possible the benchmarks you saw were for a different size/model. It is possible that it is slower then it should be, but without more info it's impossible to tell for sure. Also did you check with it plugged in or on battery?

So I may just be paranoid and babying my new Mac too much. I also do not want to come across as a whiner. I work incredibly hard and do not have a lot of extra $ to spare, so this purchase was a big deal for me. This also could be all chalked up to ignorance with the new system, who knows. Thats why I am here
Any advice on the SSD speed, CPU, Mail issue, Battery Life etc would be great. I am within my return window and could always take it back for a new Air if you guys think that is advisable. Thank you in advance!

No, don't feel wrong about your concerns - now is the time to resolve this during the return period - if there is a problem you shouldn't be stuck with a defective machine - but determining the issue ASAP would be good since if you need to return it or exchange it I think the period is 14 days, after that you'll have to just use warranty repair to deal with any issues in the system.

mad_griff · Jun 27, 2012

Nethfel said:
Hi, welcome to the forums!

Ok, the first time you sync up mail, it WILL take some time and DON'T quit the application - for one thing, it won't really properly quit until it's done. If you have a ton of email in your gmail account you may just want to start it and walk away for a bit (leave it plugged in tho while doing it, no point in draining the battery doing this). this can also make the system feel somewhat less responsive, especially if mail is in the foreground. After it's properly synced Mail shouldn't be quite as problematical.

That seems a little quick to me on the battery drain - did you have mail or anything else running in the background? That is a bit odd on the capacity unless the software is misreading the data on the battery - but it seems your battery is draining somewhat fast. I know my 2011 11" MBA which is 17 weeks old shows 100% capacity (actually, coconut is showing a higher current cap then the design cap which makes me wonder how accurate it is)
I only had Safari running

That's not too terribly hot for the mobiles, plus it may be a bit off from reality, not sure. My MBA that only has istat, iTunes (not doing anything, just open) and a web page open fluctuates my cpu from 105 - 130. Yours might be a little high, but I don't know what all you actually have running in the background (like were you letting your mail process?) Now my SSD is much cooler then yours sitting idle (<100). Usually I set to deg C instead of deg F since that's what I'm more used to seeing when it comes to comp temps. Yours might be running hotter then normal, but without knowing more about your configuration and what you are actually running in the background and foreground it's impossible to say for sure.
At the time that I wrote those numbers down, I just had safari and chrome running. This was probably 15-30 min after I had to force quit Mail though. Maybe it was still running hot from that?

Can't really comment on this but a 400MB/s (remember Mb = megabits, MB = megabytes which is what I'm sure your actually seeing) read speed isn't bad. What size SSD do you have and which Toshiba SSD model do you have? It's possible the benchmarks you saw were for a different size/model. It is possible that it is slower then it should be, but without more info it's impossible to tell for sure. Also did you check with it plugged in or on battery?
Ill double check which Toshiba SSD it is, the benchmarks I saw online were for the Toshiba SSD though (128gb). In this case, the MBA was plugged in and had absolutely no programs running.

No, don't feel wrong about your concerns - now is the time to resolve this during the return period - if there is a problem you shouldn't be stuck with a defective machine - but determining the issue ASAP would be good since if you need to return it or exchange it I think the period is 14 days, after that you'll have to just use warranty repair to deal with any issues in the system.

Thanks for taking the time to respond! I am just a bit nervous about the MBA slowing down so much, and how this relates to future proofing. The battery really concerned me as well.

Nethfel · Jun 27, 2012

Right now the battery would be my primary concern, it shouldn't have lost useable life in that quantity in such a short period of time (see my response above where mine is 17 weeks old and still shows 100%), you could always attempt to drain it down and recharge it a couple times to see if those numbers change.

I'd probably also see how much CPU usage there is (Activity monitor or iStat) and watch the temp to see where it goes.

Same goes with the SSD, I'd check the model you actually have and go to Toshiba's website (assuming it is a toshiba drive) and look up the specs for that specific unit.

If the battery has a significant issue or the system is running too hot for basic operations then I would probably consider taking it in / exchanging it.

Another question I'd have is if you're in an air conditioned room and if you're using the laptop on a table or your lap or the sofa or what... anything blocking the air flow could have serious impact on the temp readings.

New 2012 13" MBA Owner - Having Technical issues

mad_griff

Nethfel

mad_griff

Nethfel

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