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Macbook Air Performs Poorly

Macbook Air Performs Poorly - Recently, after testing two MacBook Air models running Windows 7, we published results that showed the thin and light Apple laptops outperformed most Windows-based netbooks and ultraportable notebooks. Hundreds of readers commented on the article, with many of the comments going something like this: “The MacBook Air costs far more than many of the laptops you’ve compared it against. How does it do against similarly priced notebooks?”

It’s a reasonable question, so we went back and did the comparison. (Our results are illustrated in the charts below.) The numbers show that many Windows notebooks that carry a similar price tag outperform the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models we tested. Other differences show up, too. Many of the better-performing Windows laptops are bigger and heavier than the Air, and some have poorer battery life. But if you’re interested in getting the most pop possible for your buck, it’s clear that the MacBook Air isn’t the best way to go.

The PCWorld Labs team used Apple's Boot Camp application to load Windows 7 on new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models. Then we benchmarked them using our WorldBench 6 test suite and the games Call of Duty 4 and DiRT 2.

First, we tested a high-end, $1199 11-inch MacBook Air packing a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, 128GB of flash storage, and an Nvidia GeForce 320M integrated graphics chipset. The 11-inch Air earned a WorldBench 6 score of 74 and managed to sustain a frame rate of 23 frames per second while running COD4 at 1024-by-768 resolution and high graphics settings.

Macbook Air Performs Poorly
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