I recently bought a new Macbook Air for work – a mid-2013 Haswell one. I got all the optional upgrades which means it’s an i7, 8Gb of RAM and 512Gb SSD. The main reason I upgraded from my mid-2011 Macbook Air was that I wanted more RAM – with 4Gb it was struggling to run Azure VMs in Windows. Also the 256Gb SSD was stretched, I was constantly having to fight to free up disk space in both Windows and OSX. Finally, I wanted USB 3.0, so that I could use an external HDD at full speed should I need more disk space. And the new PCI-based SSD sounded tasty.

My Windows 8 Pro license is an upgrade only license, so in order to get Windows 8 on it I first had to install Windows 7 using Boot Camp. Which went fine.

Once Windows 7 was installed I ran the Windows 8 upgrade installation. It would go through the whole process but then after a few reboots and at the end of the setup process it would hang at the “Personalise” screen, where you choose a colour scheme and a name for your computer. It wasn’t actually hung, it was just that the keyboard and mouse didn’t work so I couldn’t click next. Neither the built in keyboard nor a USB keyboard would work.

So then I tried downloading and making a Windows 8 ISO and installing from that via Boot Camp (instead of installing Win 7 first), which worked fine, but then when I Activated Windows it wouldn’t let me because I have an upgrade only Windows 8 license. Poo.

So my third attempt, and this time I installed Windows 7 first, and the Boot Camp drivers in Windows 7. Then when I ran the Windows 8 upgrade install I elected to choose to Keep Windows settings, personal files and applications – the idea being that it would keep the Boot Camp drivers installed.

Well, third time lucky anyway cos that worked.

Update: it looks like this is a known issue – see this solution.

So, how does the new Macbook perform compared to my older mid-2011 Macbook Air?

Here’s 2011’s Windows Experience Index:

And here’s 2013’s. Not really much faster!

Finally, here’s 2013’s again under Windows 8:

The only thing worth noting is the decent hard disk rating.

Another advantage of the Haswell chipset is longer battery life – up to 12 hours according to Apple, and the reviews seem to confirm that. BUT I bought the i7 version which is a bit more of a power hog, as confirmed by AnandTech – so I only get about 6 hours of battery life, a slight improvement on the 4 hours I was getting on the 2011 i7 version.

So overall, the 2013 Air is not much of an upgrade on the 2011 version really. Which is a bit of a disappointment.