The problem is, the MBA battery does not deliver what Apple said it should, that is, five hours of moderate usage with the WiFi turned on. In the Apple support forums, new MacBook Air users are complaining that MBA battery gives them only 2 hours, if at all. There are also reports that the MBA battery takes 10 hours to fully recharge. Say what! I think we’ve posted about this somewhere but due to expert reviewers, we gave Apple the benefit of the doubt and began buying one ultra-expensive ultra-portable MacBook Air. Apparently, real life use for many MacBook Air owners do not support the results of expert testing.

Via 

The review concludes:

We’re still hard at work on the MacBook Air review, but this data was too important not to share right away. By now you’ve heard that under “normal” usage, the Air can only manage about 2.5 hours of battery life. That’s true and at the same time it isn’t. I touch on part of this in the review, but the MacBook Air isn’t designed to be your work notebook – no ultra portable is. It’s a notebook for a writer, for someone taking notes in class; it’s a second notebook, or a third system. As such, the typical usage model can be very different than your standard notebook.

To be fair, MBA lasted 4.27 hours on browsing the Web or playing MP3 music. I admit, this is good enough for me since I use my MacBook primarily to surf and blog. What I don’t understand is why watching a movie on the Air sucks the battery faster than having the WiFi on. Maybe the testers didn’t turn WiFi off.

Source

Michael Horowitz, who writes a blog for CNET called “Defensive Computing, has a very important point to make about the design of Apple’s sub-notebook superficially made for business users or road warriors. The non-replaceable battery makes another appearance as primary suspect. Imagine, Horowitz writes, forgetting to backup all your important files when you ship your MBA for a change of battery? How many times have we forgot to backup important files? Now imagine making a disk-image backup of the hard disk without an optical drive?

Horowitz thinks the MacBook Air “is a really bad idea.” Apple promised us battery replacements for only $129 with no service charge. Yeah, and where is the fine print on Apple never changing the price of MacBook Air battery. Here is Aple’s repair terms and conditions and here is the MacBook Air battery replacement FAQ page.

Horowitz’s column

Okay, the battery replacement for the MacBook Air is fairly reasonable at $129 and installation is complete. It still comes short of having the option of changing the batteries yourself, but it’s definitely a move forward for Apple.

The thinking is, no one is going to carry a spare battery around anyways. But then what happens when you need the battery replaced? According to Apple, the process takes 5 days, which means that it’s not really a secondary or backup battery you need but a backup MacBook. Geez!

Guided tour after the jump.