Flash Kills the MacBook Air Battery 33% Faster
Flash could make a battery go in a flash.
When Apple shipped its latest MacBook Air laptops without Flash preinstalled, it gave the explanation that it would rather users installed Flash themselves so that they could get the latest, most secure version.
This is a plausible explanation because often times Apple fails to include the latest build of Flash even in its most recent Mac OS X updates. The latest builds of Flash include GPU video acceleration – something that current Mac users have to upgrade themselves if they want the feature.
There could be another very big reason that Apple left out Flash in its latest, thinnest laptops, and that would be battery life.
In Ars Technica's tests of the 11-inch model, it found that the little laptop survived 4 hours of Safari web browsing with Flash enabled. With Flash taken out of the system, the laptop ran for just over 6 hours.
Apple quotes a 5 hour battery life for this particular MacBook Air, so real world numbers appear to be within a close range of that. Still, for those on the go with a new MacBook Air, is it worth sacrificing a third of your battery life for Flash?
Perhaps the best solution would be to have Flash disabled elements until the user decides to display them, like Click to Flash.

dude you aimed for east, but you hit west
Fixed.
TLDR = Cpu usage eats battery, duh!
Fixed.
oh wait, we are talking about Apple crowd.
personally, i love the gpu acceleration applications whether its implementation on Firefox 4.0 or on flash 10.1, it makes life far better.
This would be a fair comparison.
I bet watching high definition videos would reduce the battery life by 33% also, does this mean that the ability to play these videos whould be taken away?
It seems to me is that Seagate is the better option for me with their hybrid drive. I guess I'll wait for more test about this issue.
dude you aimed for east, but you hit west
And you can count on Apple to take ancient technology and get its fans excited about it... whether it be making folders on the iphone, or core2duo on their new laptops. *yawn*
Reason they use core2duo in the low end laptops is so they can couple it with a decent gnu, cuz intel is of the gay and won't let any other integrated ships elides their own into i3/5 etc.
Hmmm. Good point there sir.
I've always considered efficiency, capacity and value, and Flash drive ain't one of it. I am thinking to get a MacBook Air for my wife but I don't think it's what she needs. We both like the size and it's simplicity but not what it can it can do.
No disrespect but I prefer not to be called dude.
i meant that the article is about adobe flash not flash drives
Well said; the only bad thing about SSD is the capacity. The whole point of MacBook Air is portability. Anything that kills battery has to go; which brings us here.
What about extra space you may ask? Well, that's what NAS (clouds and what-have-you) is for. Apple got it right with Air. Repeat after me, portability, portability, portability.