While Ars Technica was testing the MacBook Air, they found that dumping flash actually boosted the battery life of the Air by two hours.
The MacBook Air doesn’t have Adobe Flash bundled with it on these new models. Instead, Apple suggests that users can download the latest and secure version themselves if needed.
The MacBook Air tested was capable of about six hours of web browsing on a full charge without flash. However, when flash was installed, that dropped to just four hours.
“Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary,” Foresman wrote. Without the Flash plugin installed, websites typically display static ads in place of Flash content, erasing the need for constant processing power demanded by the Flash plugin’s rendering engine.
With Flash ads consuming as much as 33 percent of the MacBook Air’s battery potential, it’s no wonder why Apple has demonstrated no interest in getting a version of Flash installed on its iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, all of which have much smaller batteries.
Although many people still enjoy using flash, and for the reason that flash can be found in a lot of pages mixed in banner ads etc… it certainly would be good to have it there although if you want better battery life, it could be worth removing it while out and about.
Via: Apple Insider
Yeah and I get 20 hours battery life with my screen off!