Current Ferrari 4005 User, Thinking To Upgrade To Acer 8204 Or Mac Book Pro 2G.

Hi, i'm currently using Acer Ferrari 4005 , and actually quite happy with it, but there are of course some complains like:

-LCD is quite dim and i foung thet the resolutions is i little bit too high to my liking, i have to put a lot of effort to read web pages with small fonts or maybe that's just my not perfect eye sights
-Fan Noise , i use it for work and to surf the net at night in my quite bed room, the fan is loud even if i only browsing the net
-performance is ok, but sometimes is quite slow because all the anti virus and firewall, etc on a wingdos machine

anyway i want to upgrade my notebook, and my innitial target is the Acer 8204, but after reading few post on the acer section, i'm quite afraid to go and buy one, seems like more than 75% of people there are complaining about the graphic card buzzing noise, poor screen, and other problems.

yesterday i run into this apple forums, and read about the boot camp, and suddenly i feel like "this is it!" I've been drooling for apple notebooks even before i buy my Ferrari last year, actually i was planning to buy an 12" ibook to try "MAC" and because the price is quite cheap, so if i dun like it i just can sell it again without too much loss, but after seing this macbookpro running XP natively, then i thought why have 2 seperates notebook for 2 seperates OS while i can have them both in 1 notebook at the sametime

i need my lappie for:
-Browsing Internet
-keeping data such as pictures,movie,songs,etc
-Office stuff, excel,word, etec
-watching DVD's

some of my question is :
-i own my own shop here , and i use a custom made software for my account and stock availability using an .EXE programs in XP. Will i able to run this software in MBP running boot camp ?
-I dun play games alot but i like to play games like Fifa soccer, Nba Live, CM Manager, car racing games, etc, will they run ok in the MBP running boot camp ?
-Can i use external mouse with 2 buttons , i mean, will both of the button work correctly like in wintel notebook ?
-can i use any printers made for the wintel notebook ?
-can i use gamepad or joystick made for Wintel notebooks ?
-in fact can i use any other USB connectons accecories made for the Wintel notebooks ?
-can i go into MS dos Prompt in MBP running Boot camp?

Sorry for asking so much questions, i've been thingking i want to keep my data and browse internet using macs, and do gaming and work stuff using the XP Via boot camp, and if i cant adjust to macs, then 'll turn the MBP to be tottally an Xp machine, will this be ok ??

Please guide me here cause i never own a mac before, but i really like they design for long time ago, (actually i like the design of the current ibook more than the MBP) i think white is sweet

another question is i know that people are saying that new macbook is coming , biut is there any othe 15"4" MAC BOOK ?? cause i only want it in 15"
for me anything below is smaller and bigger is too much so is the <BP is the right choice ???

Last question , how is the speed and benchmark and real daily speed of the 2.0G MBP vs my acer ferrari 4005 if both were installed with Windows XP ???

thx a lot guys, this is the best note book forums in the world !!!

 

It is just like running Windows on any PC. As long as you have the correct port I don't see why you can't connect anything.

 

I'm not too sure of the mouse though - I know that the mouse should work fine with OS X, but I don't know if Apple has worked the kinks of letting the USB ports run properly. I would assume so, but I'm not certain they would work properly.

 

Also keep in mind that the GPU in the MBP is *severely* underclocked from the ATI's own speccs. For whatever reason. Maybe it's cuz the MPB's thermo envelope can't handle the additional heat, maybe it's to save battery life, but for whatever reason, personally I would stay away from this first generation of MBPs. There are kinks still need to be worked out.

And frankly, having dual-boot doesn't really give you 2 OSs on 1 machine -- it's true that it gives you 2 OSs, but you can't transfer files between them, nor can you flip back and forth between them. In essence you are still stuck with 1 OS at a time. Parallel's VT technology, when matured with GPU support, I think holds far more promise. If I were you I'd sit tight and wait. I don't think this current version of MBP is worth the premium for the slight performance boost you will see over your current system.

cheers,

yass

 

External hard drive would fix the file transfer problem.

 

Dude, I made a hugeass response to your post on notebookforums.com that covered almost everything you want information on.

 

I will try and answer some of your questions. I too was in the market for a new windows laptop, I had actually pre-ordered the new W3J from ASUS. After hearing about bootcamp I thought I would at least go to apples website and check out their laptops. I wanted a laptop that I could use wireless internet, take to school and type and create office documents (word,excel,powerpoint) as well as occasionally game. I have hundreds of dollars invested in Windows based games that I also did not want to give up.
After seeing the insane price for the macbookpro ($1999 and $2499 and now $2899 (2.16ghz)) I thought, NO WAY!!!. Then I heard about the student discount. I was willing to pay $1800 for the W3J and with the student discount the macbookpro came to $1800 bucks. After looking at its specs (very similiar to the W3J except a 15.4" screen vs 14" and 512mb of ram vs 1gig I thought, why not. It is still fast, has a great video card, a fast processor and looks freaking beautiful.

So I read up on bootcamp and the macbookpro. I read about the heat issues and the whine, so I went down to my local apple store located in the mall by where I love. I touched the mbp and it was hot as hell. Granted it had been on for almost 10 hours , but still Then I talked to some guys and they showed me some of the features and I fell in love with it. I went down the next day (1 hour after it opened) and felt the mbp again and it was still hot. Well, because of the student discount ($200 off the $2k one) I got 32% off the 3 year warranty (230+ instead of 330+ or something), so I purchased it along with a 2 button bluetooth mouse and microsoft office for mac.

Since then I have installed bootcamp and it runs windows perfectly. I installed Oblivion and ran it farely smoothly. Connection to the internet was easy with my wireless and the bluetooth picked up the mouse right off the bat (actually, it picks it up faster in windows than in OS X).

I have since run dvd's, games, office documents and have stored all my ipod songs on the Mac partion. The thing runs beautifully but I added 512mb more ram (1gig total). I think that is a must.

With the bluetooth mouse I have right button action on both MAC and WINDOWS operating systems. Even without the mouse you just hold ctrl and use the tap button.

All your adapters that work in Windows should work in the windows partion. As long as your usb drivers are connected they should adapt. Same for your printer. I have yet to install the printer to my laptop, but I assume epson has macintosh drivers (they sell epsons at the apple store).

Remember, bootcamp makese your macbook have the ability to use windows. In windows, everything is the same as if you used windows on a dedicated windows pc only. It runs very smooth and unless you try to use the iSight video camera, you shouldn't have any problems out of the ordinary.

One problem, other than the heat and the whistle is the really sensitive cd player (it is only 24x too). Sometimes even the smallest scratch on a cd will make it so itunes can't read that particular song and then you have to have a fun time trying to eject the cd (it keeps spinning and spinning, sometimes you just have to but your laptop into sleep mode, then awake it and eject the cd).

Lastly, the videocard is heavily underclocked. Most windows laptops with x1600's run them at 470mhz on the core and 470mhz on the ram. Apple decided 310 on the core and 300 on the memory. Using ATI TOOL in windows you can increase those (I run 400core 480 memory). It helps a TON with games.

Anyway, Hope that answered some of your questions and wasn't too long. In the end I believe it was money well spent on the macbook, but I would have looked at windows pc's a little bit more if I knew the macbook was so heavily underclocked on the video card!