Running primarily Windows 7 on MacBook Pro

I'm not looking to have Windows, and only Windows, installed on my laptop. I'm just curious as to how many of you use Boot Camp to get Windows installed -- and then use Windows on your MB / MBP 99% of the time.

Love the MBP's design, trackpad, and battery life, but I really like Windows 7. I'm on a 15" MBP from June of last year, so the hardware is still decent. I am aware that I'll lose a couple hours of battery life, and that Boot Camp 3.1 isn't perfect (but is still pretty good, and much improved over v3.0).

So does anyone ever make a baby partition for OS X and then devote 90% of the hard drive to Windows?

 

As many around here will say the battery life is destroyed by running windows so that will not help. Then there are some driver issues that could cause certain things not to work correctly.

When I first got my MBP I wanted to just run windows on it but the shortened battery life pushed me away from it, also some say it will run hotter.

 

If you don't want OSX at all just boot off the Windows 7 DVD and start installing. Then install Bootcamp for the drivers.

 

Those are both mostly due to the fact that Apple implemented the dual GPU's in a way that only allows the dedicated GPU to run and not allow switching to the on board GPU. killing both battery life and the skin on your thighs. If they had done it CORRECTLY then Windows would easily get 7+hrs out of a MacBook Pro and the temps would be great.

 

you can do it, but expect 2.75-4 hours of battery on win 7 ( Closer to 3 I find ), touchpad drivers for windows can be somewhat annoying as well.

if you want the battery life AND win 7 you are better off looking at a different machine

 

Right, and next time around, it'll probably be something like the Envy 14. Just trying to pacify myself in the meantime, even with the lesser battery life and shoddy graphics handling.

 

I'm getting 9 hours off my MBP 13" on OS X compared to 5 hours completely idle on Windows 7. I find it hard to believe you could dig out 7+ hours, but if I'm doing something wrong with my notebook and someone could give me tips to get more battery life out of Windows 7, I would appreciate it.

I'm actually getting just under 7 hours now (6:40), but that is with a seriously optimized Windows 7 and under-volted CPU. I find it hard to believe you can easily achieve '7+' with the 15/17".

 

Buy a Mac because you want/need OSX. If you will be primarily running Windows, buy a Windows machine. I don't understand why people insist on investing in tools which aren't properly suited for the task they want to perform!

 

Here we go again...

(Yep, I had to delete posts.)

 

I'll chime in...

While you say that you want to run Win7 on the Mac, you may find that there is no need to. Depends on what you want to do. You will find many things/programs that are made for Windows are also made for Mac. And sometimes Mac has a better interpretation of a program. For the programs that don't exist, say, like Onenote, you can run Crossover.

Windows Applications Seamlessly Integrated on Mac OS X - Mac Windows - CodeWeavers

Or you can run a virtual machine or bootcamp to get 100% compatibility.

See that sticky thread in this section about VMs and Bootcamp.

 

@2.0: I understand your reasoning behind deleting the posts, and I won't argue it. But I still stand behind the fact that I would like some explanation as to what features the OS X presents that Windows 7 does not.

I've looked up Google (usually comes with page of past versions, making it redundant) and the Apple website, but I haven't seen much besides some functionality (Expose, etc.). I'm interested as to what else the OS X offers as I would like to make a full transition from Windows 7 to OS X (for battery life and a better functioning track-pad). As of now, I'm still too used to Windows 7, which causes a split between the time spent between the two OS'.

EDIT: Programs like Parallels won't do for me.

 

That's a legit question. What begged the question was inflammatory.

Little things mostly. But the rub is, Win7 and OS X as OSs are fairly competitive. For those used to Windows, especially after many iterations of Windows, the transition can take a while. Sort of like switching to Linux. What it comes down to IMO, is availability of programs. Games especially. Non-gamers have the easier transition.

Anyway, I think the better way to phrase the question to assist in making the transition is, "can OS X do this?" or "is this available for OS X?" Those two question will tailor the answer as to whether or not something is a deal breaker or not.

Like for myself, I need Onenote (though Notebook can do a lot of what Onenote can do, just differently). It's the one program that is not available in Office 2008 for OS X. But it runs in Crossover.

For business, of course I can't use a Mac. The software is proprietary and made for Windows only. I could run it in bootcamp or a VM, but I have other notebooks for that.

 

Maybe one day, when unicorns are discovered and Bill Gates works for Apple, poor mods like 2.0 won't have to delete posts in threads about OS X and Windows at the same time. As for the other issues, (almost) everything I would want to do can be done on either system, with one notable exception: Examsoft's SofTest as required for medical school, which cannot be run in a VM.

I just kinda like Windows, really. People who think it's a terri-bad OS strike me as silly, as do the "omg OS X > Windoze hahah I wanna have Steve Jobs's baby" group. Kind of wish OS X was a 96 dpi OS like Windows... I get the reasoning behind it, but... meh.

I did have a 200 GB Windows partition going today, and ended up getting rid of the stupid thing... the keyboard layout annoys me (keep hitting Fn because Ctrl should be there, heh), the trackpad has brief freezes when tap dragging is enabled, and it does run hot like we all knew anyway. Was willing to live with the lesser battery life.

(eta: come on, 2.0, you know they are. )

 

in my experience, the trackpad runs terrible in Win7. You lose all the smoothness and in turn, functionality of the trackpad. Also Windows isn't optimised for the Macbook Battery or power saving in general, thus battery life is sub-optimal. If OSX had some aspects of Windows such as window previews/navigation in the dock, it'd be perfect.

 

There's more to it than "what can OS X do". There is also what OS X doesn't need to do (defrag, registry fixes) and what does it do differently (settings, installing and removing programs, finding your files).

I disagree about OS X being difficult to learn for Windows users. After using MS operating systems since DOS I switched to Mac last year and was comfortable with it after a few hours. Did I know the system as well as Windows? Not in the slightest but I didn't expect to cram decades of experience into a couple of days either. As long as you don't go looking for the Windows way to do things and are open to something new you'll be fine.

The problem on this forum is when people post uneducated opinions as fact for either side. It makes it hard not to respond as you don't want others to think that the posted nonsense is true. Then of course there is the difficulty of reading a comment in a way it isn't meant (abusive vs joking). It usually leads to an argument, name calling, deleted posts and eventual thread closure.