MacBook Pro Bootcamp Review

If anyone is interested about the MacBook Pro capabilities including bootcamp I found a good review at Tom's Hardware.

http://www.geardigest.com/2007/02/07/apples-macbook-pro/

Just as a conclusion to this posting I'd like to comment that using the Omega Drivers in XP increases performance and makes the (gaming) comparable to any other laptop with an x1600. Not to mention that the MBP's x1600 has ddr3 onboard.

I use my Macbook Pro to play games such as CS: Source, WoW, AoE3, Quake 4 under bootcamped XP when I'm not doing work or not in school. Let me note the performance is really good.

For everything else I use OSX.

 

Nice, ya need to do that. But I haven't bought Oblivion yet. The sad thing is we have an XBOX 360 in our house and have Oblivion. Unfortunately my roomates girlfriend is addicted to it so I'll never have a chance to play unless I buy my own! I think it's ironic that she viamently protests Halo2 in our house because she can't stand the "bang bang bang", but it's okay for her to vegetate all night with oblivion.

 

Very cool technologically! But in practice it is nothing more then a fancier dual booting system. I think for now I'll stick to stuff like Crossover and cedega / cider for my out-of-windows/using windows software experience.

 

Yar, Oblivion rips up the x1600's.
But I haven't tried the Omega drivers yet.
One day I'll own a high end system wiht SLI so I can play it on high settings...
Unfortunantly Crossover has very poor support for apps. I found it to be completely useless. It does have a neat factor to it, but when it can't really do much...
I still say bootcamp + parallels for all your windows needs.

Just stay away from the VMWare Fusion Beta. It's ... terrible.

 

I thought cider was up and coming still, and only works with nvidia yes, no? I'm sure the x1600 will get torn a new butt if I pushed Oblivion, but to have it at all would be nice, =) I've seen people talk about OCing the gpu, but it seems a little insane in a mostly passively cooled laptop. One interesting thing I found yesterday was an express port pci-express expansion box.. did that make sense? I don't have the time to find this again ATM, but maybe later. It's pricey, but looks exciting for the future of laptops, supporting Windows and OSX. If there was a chance I could drop a dx10 gpu into it..I might be able to game competitively into the coming year.

 

Thanks good info

 

Just to chime in I also installed XP Pro on my machine through Boot Camp for the sole purpose of playing games, and I have had no problems at all yet

I mostly play EverQuest, Guild Wars and Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, not a single issue with any of those so far.

 

I'm curious as to how good those PCI-X expansions will do. It's hard to think of something not directly attached to the system bus could be as fast as a normal internal card.
But... if what I'm understanding is true... then I guess nothing really will be attached directly to a mobo. It will be attached to it via a pci-x cable.

It certainly does bring a lot of interesting prospects to the future of both desktops and laptops.

BTW, I mean PCI-express not PCI-X (two different beasties).

 

Nice review.

I wonder if you can Switch between OSX & windows(or any other OS) without Resetting? Kind of like logging in a differ session, but make it a OS.

I would like to know this because if I get a Mac .......
I would still need to run Exchange & SYNC options under Windows.
I would also like to SYNC some of my contacts from my Smartphone VIA Bluetooth. And a couple more simple tasks that can only under windows.

I would not mind at all resetting to use alot of programs on Windows, But to reset for the simple tasks that I have mentioned above would be a pain.

 

I'm wondering if it's possible to use Windows XP Home Service Pack 2 (instead of Pro) ... as it's the only version of Windows I have. I have some old games that I might want to put on the laptop, so I'm not bored as hell when traveling.

UPDATE:

Nevermind, just found out that I can use my Windows XP Home Service Pack 2 disc! Woo hoo!

 

LIVEFRMNYC:
You can if you use Parallels. You can't do 3D stuff in Parallels yet though, so no gaming through that - that would have to be through Boot Camp.

dead_red_eyes:
Yep, Home or Pro both work fine as long as they have SP2 on the disc.

 

Yea, I did figure that. Don't know much about Parallels but is it like a Virtual Machine rather than a Partition? I wouldn't care either way, if I was to boot Windows on a mac then SYNCing, Outlook and Office apps would most likely be my only reason.

Thanks.

 

You can get Office 2004 for Mac which includes Entourage - equiv of Outlook 2003. I use it for my exchange server email at school. For any Windows sharing/printing on my School's Windows network - I bought Thursby Software: Dave.

 

Not sure how Parallels does a Windows install normally, but I know they added functionality so that you can use a Boot Camp-installed Windows partition in Parallels also (giving you the options of both booting to Windows and using Windows apps without rebooting).

As Zentox said Office is available for the Mac anyway, and iSync handles a lot of things - depends on what you want to sync really.