State of MacBook Pro + Vista?

Hi all.
I'm considering buying an MBP, but also using Vista on it much of the time. I also was planning on using Boot Camp for that. Somebody told me that not everything is supported in Windows and that I may have minor/major issues. A different person told me everything is supported driver-wise, except the backlit keyboard.

I'm wondering what kinds of things I would run into if I use Vista (say, Business, 32-bit version) on a MacBook Pro through Boot Camp

 

If you use vista most of the time, buy a pc laptop. if you use mac most of the time, then buy a macbook pro.

 

Helpful answer. The MBP has a nice design, is usually built better and is lighter than any other 15.4" laptop out there. It also has one of the best screens I've seen on a 15" laptop, which is one of the reasons why it appeals to me so much.

Either way I was just curious

 

I don't think you'll have a problem. The Leopard CD contains all the drivers needed to get the Mac specific functions working on a 32-bit Vista.

 

Everything worked fine on the Vista set up I had on a MBP. Only thing that I noticed didnt work was double clicking on the track pad (had to use the button). I didnt play around with it enough to see if there were any other issues

 

Almost all parts of the Mac are supported in Windows. There are very minor ones, such as not being able to double tap on the trackpad as a right click, but yeah, its not a big deal, not a deal killer at all if you ask me.

 

That's not good because I'm a fan of (easy) right clicking; better yet, I also like middle clicking in Firefox and such What about two-finger scrolling - also impossible? And the keyboard backlight?

 

No, two-finger scrolling is fine. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the keyboard backlight is fine as well.

You can always just connect a mouse, and that works fine.

 

Awesome, thanks Now, the big question.. "is it really worth the money for me?" Time to go decide on that...

 

Tangential point to this - is there a way to disable the keyboard backlight from starting every time I boot Windows? It's annoying to have to disable it via F8 every time I want to use XP.

 

I've been dual booting OSX + Vista for about 5 months now. It works very well, although the touchpad isn't as responsive as it is in OSX. Pressing the F keys in order to change volume/brightness/etc requires the use of the function key. Otherwise, Vista runs very very well on my MBP...actually better than it does on any of my PCs! Ironic!

 

Well, I would say no. You are buying on prettiness and please understand that Mac users (although we have no other choice) don't buy Macs on prettiness, we are buying for the Mac OS X operating system. Honestly the idea that a Mac can run Windows full speed is VERY COOL but you have to understand that it's designed to bridge gaps and not to turn a Mac machine into a Windows box.
You shouldn't have to tolerate this and that not being perfect while running Windows so this is why people are saying to buy a Windows PC if Vista is going to be used most of the time. It's truly a waste.
Another thing, you will get full support from the OEM when buying a physical Windows PC. Apple doesn't support Windows and if you have serious issues and can't get the problem resolved when Apple finds out the issue was initiated from Windows they won't support it.
Don't get Bootcamp support mixed up with Windows support.

So don't take it personally if based on your needs the forum tries to push you away from a Mac, we are actually helping you. Of course in a perfect world we would love to see the majority using Macs but keep in mind it's a "Mac"book, not just Apple hardware.

 

Of course. The main reason I'm deciding to stay away from the MBP is the support. I can deal with software issues myself, but I definitely dont want to pay $250 or whatever for Apple Care, or be stuck SOL after the year is up and the battery explodes or something. I was actually considering using OSX for basic day-to-day tasks, or even getting VMWare Fusion to run those specialized Windows-only apps, but oh well. I doubt that's a realistic goal for myself though, as I'm too used to Windows.

Why does Apple have to make their hardware so appealing? Damn Steve Jobs, hah.

 

Apple is all about design, they gotta make their stuff stylish Before I got a Mac I was also worried about having to adapt to a new OS... but after a day with it, I knew where everything was, and how everything worked. It's just so simple compared to Windows, and now I have a hard time going back to windows because the dock is so convenient, lol. If you want a Mac, then go for it, it's a great OS. The only real use I see in Windows anymore is just games. Then again, I *HAD* to get a Mac for school, if it weren't for that I'd have went with an XPS. My advice to you is see if you can try one out somewhere before taking the plunge.

 

I've thought about it enough, and I think I'm going to go for a PC notebook after all. That way my wallet will also be as happy as me

 

7evendeuse, what are you going to use the laptop for (apps)? I took MBP because of the hardware as I couldn't find any PC laptop with the screen that will meet my requirements. And of course MBP is very small (sometimes I can't believe how little space it takes on my desk). But it is a bit tough to move to OSX if you got used to all keyboard shortcuts and the way Windows works.

A month after my switch I can say I am more than satisifed with MBP and I am happy I have resisted to install Windows on it. I can't believe I hesitated so long waisting time with Dell.

 

What PC notebook are you looking at now?

Anyways, good luck with your search .

 

Lovely attitude.

I got my Black Macbook 3 days ago now. My first Mac. Why because I am a small business consultant and my partner and I just signed a support contract with a doctors office that has 2 macs and 20 or so PC's to include Windows servers. This is the second client we have that we want to keep, that have a few Macs.

I am running Boot Camp now with Vista Business 32 and it works great. I wanted one notebook that had the ability to run Vista most of the time and OS X sometimes....to support users of OS X connecting to windows resources.

I like SMALL notebooks so even MBP is big for me. This new Macbook from a hardware stanpoint is very nice. I would the only thing I dont like is the fact there is no option for a docking station for what I paid for it. Its not really much more expensive than an equvilent Windows notebook. I ordered a 250gig drive and 4gigs of memory for it at the same time from newegg (Apple wants INSANE amounts of money).

OS X is a great, it really is a nice OS. I see it as the best Linux...or UNIX with a great GUI. There a few things that I need to still learn but its nice for sure. I will say that Ubuntu is coming close to the OS X quality but lags behind things like time machine.

The problem I have with OS X as a platform is its applications. Office 2007 blows away anything on OS X. I use Visio and OneNote a lot. I am hoping that Office 2008 is a big step in the right direction. I aslo purchased Sony Video Vegas Platinum ($89) back in September when I got a new hard drive based Sony camera, since Windows Movie Maker does not support hard drive file format. Vegas is a great product and while I have spent only about 20 min in iMovie so far it is weak comared to Vegas. Another thing that bugs me is web browsers. Safari...sucks. Camino is cool, very fast and lean, but it has problems with some sites like Hotmail for instance, throws me into the old gui mode. Firefox works on most of the pages that Camino cant but is slow and just hangs at times under OS X. All of them have horrible screen fonts while in OSX. Blocky...bloated, fuzzy text. I would have thought MS would have this problem over OS X the king of graphics and art.

Lastly (here come the laughs) I won a Zune last year. I loved the hardware right off the bat, very durable and until the new Ipod touch the Zune had/has a great screeen on it. The problem was the software was very bad...flat out horrible. That is until this November when it got a major update (probably a total re-write) and now its great. The whole package is great, FM radio, wireless sync and software that runs very fast and is nice looking. I have never really liked itunes but liked my ipods before they died on me and got scratched 30 seconds after owning them. Why iTunes cant monitor a folder like WMP has for years and the Zune sofware can....amazes me. People these days do have home networks and they do centralize media files....believe it or not.

Anyhow if I could get OS X to run in a VM....I would and boot only from Vista on this nice looking, well built, Apple platic wrapped Intel PC. If we loose the need to support OS X, I will probably blow format the drive and use only Vista. I have had only one problem with Vista, slow copy performance and it was a show stopper for me and my job. Recently it was fixed with an update and now Vista is golden for me.

I will force my self to use OS X, and hopefully find things to really like about it. I will use Fusion after I install it to access my needed Windows Apps (Visio, onenote, Zune and Vegas) via Unity and use Office 2008 for my office needs when I can pick it up.

Now if I could only fine Vista 64bit drivers for that touchpad and camera, my Vista partition would be 64bit so it could use all 4gigs of RAM. I dont care so much about the camera, but he touch pad is a must.

 

A lot of Office, probably plenty of 3DS Max work, some Photoshop, some SSH'ing into other systems, some coding ...

Thanks! Looking at the HP Compaq 8510p right now. Had a couple Thinkpads before, but they annoyed me to hell with screen or build quality issues, so I'm looking at alternatives.
If only the MBP was cheaper..

 

I have heard Thinkpads have horrible screens. Go for 8510p it is a brilliant laptop. I wanted to buy 8710p but it is still unavailable/hard to get in the UK.

 

Ah, yes, the HP Compaq 8510P/Ws, great notebooks, really! If I was looking for a Windows notebook, I would go for that.

 

I'm about to make the "switch" myself. Being a PC user for well over 20 years of my life, this is going to be a huge change for me, but one I think has to be made. My wife and I own the Dell XPS M1330 and Inspiron 1420. With the CPU whine and driver issues, constant formatting and clean installs, I just want to switch over to an OS that is intuitive and will work all the time. Obivously selling these two, very new systems, and getting back close to what we paid is not going to be easy, but I think I'm going to just bite the bullet, take my loses, and move on to something great.

Just a few questions that I was hoping some of you Mac people can help me out with.

First off, the MacBook and MacBook Pros use the Intel Santa Rose chipsets. Do they exhibit any CPU whine like our Dells suffer from?

As far as using Vista, the only real need, minus a few games, that I would need Vista for is Office 2007. When using these programs to run Vista on a Mac, can I print from those Vista applications with ease? How does updates and all those things work, obviously I wouldn't need to restart the entire Mac, just the Vista program?

And as far as MacBook vs. MacBook Pro, I think the MacBook Pros aren't THAT much larger in size or weight the MacBooks. What do you suggest? I love my 13.3 Dell XPS, in looks at least, would moving to the MacBook Pro be a huge change in size and weight?

I'm sure more questions will come, some answers I've found already on my own. Looking forward to hearing from you out there to further support my "switch."

Thanks!

 

Hi SirWells,

As far as I've seen and heard, the Santa Rosa MacBooks and MBPs don't have any CPU whine. I have a Core 2 Duo MacBook, and there's no whine. I haven't heard of complaints regarding the Santa Rosa MBs and MBPs, so I wouldn't worry about that.

And yes, once you boot into Windows, your Mac is a Windows PC; so you can easily print and such.

Yes, the MBP's dimensions and weight aren't that much different from the MacBook. From the XPS M1330, I'd say it'd be pretty easy to adjust to the MBP, as its thin, lightweight and pretty small in size for a 15.4-inch.

 

Looks like getting anything remotely close to what I spent for my Dell XPS M1330 or Inspiron 1420 is just not going to happen. Then I was thinking, what about the Mac Mini? Would that be worth purchasing to "get my feet wet" in the land of Mac? I know this may sound silly, but I almost feel having two laptops, one PC and one Mac, may not be THAT bad, but obviously redundant. Very confused here!

 

Well, the Mac Mini won't be a laptop . You might want to look at Apple's Refurb section for some refurbished Macs (always excellent condition) that are much cheaper than brand new Macs are.

I think its not a bad idea...but if you ask me, then you might want to consider selling the PC, and getting a MBP for dual booting OS X as well as Windows, so you have one machine for both worlds.

 

I think that's what I'd rather do, sell the M1330, the only problem is finding a buyer and at a price that isn't super low... If only I had the Mac bug a few months back, lol...

 

Haha, yeah, that's a rather bad predicament.

Its amazing how many former Dell users are turning into Mac users...

 

cough cough, me included.

 

Maybe I'll wait for the next intel chipset to come out in a few months and just have two laptops. My wife is going to be pretty upset with me though. I'm only going by the videos on the Mac site and the word of mouth from my friends (who are all making or have made the switch). I need to play around with Leopard myself.

 

Yeah, that's really important...OS X isn't for everyone (just as Windows isn't for everyone either), and its important that you try it out in person before jumping at it!

 

Give it a good try. The first week I had it....it was frustrating to be honest. Until I got the hang of it.

The "it just works" is so true. I recently (september) bought a Sony hard drive video camera. Getting to work on Vista, was a huge pain. I had to buy Sony Video vegas since Windows Movie Maker would not use the file type? Even then the software that pulled the files off the camera would only run under 32bit Vista. So I had two pieces of software from Sony to get the thing working.

Last week I tried plugging it into my macbook and it started up iMovie.....ahh that is the way it should be.

 

I honestly cannot say anything bad about using mainly Vista on a MacBook Pro from my experience using bootcamp, it is very very simple to get going and works extremely well, I don't find any major issues at all, you can really do everything you need to do, and if not there always is a work around, but I haven't really found anything I need to work around yet, suprisingly. Performance is top notch, everything seems to work fine.

if you don't plan on using OS X however, then it is obviously hard to recommend, and a little confusing , as OS X is wonderful operating system, vista is really not bad at all, and is quite stable, but just doesn't seem to be nearly as refined. Apple has really been on the right track with everything they have been doing in the last few years, and Vista just seems like it is on some track.

my recommendation would be to not get a Mac unless you are planning for the jumping back and worth situation and have major intensive windows only apps you need to use on a daily basis, other than that, OS X all the way.

 

Vista really works great on my New 2.6ghz MacBook Pro. However, even with 4Gb's of RAM, I have noticed that VMware Fusion still takes a good 3-4 minutes to boot into the BootCamp partition under leopard. Hopefully a speed bump for Vmware Fusion + Vista will come out soon.

 

"Vista is on some track" haha, I like that. Yeah .... I'm pissed at it for the moment. Hibernation is no longer possible on my desktop for some reason, no clue why. It's still in the menu, but every time I use it (and then power my computer back on a few hours later), it's a fresh boot.

I may use OS X some of the time if I get the MBP, at least until I need some Windows-specific app. I've got no issues with OS X, and I can use it almost as well as Windows. OSX can be frustrating at times when things don't work as you want them to, but once I set everything up I doubt I'm going to need to adjust things much.

Unfortunately, I'm still having this same debate with myself. I can't seem to find a decent high-quality non-Thinkpad laptop for *significantly* less money than the MBP, so I remain somewhat torn. Maybe I'll just stick it out without a laptop for a while more because almost every laptop I look at has certain things I don't like about them. Yes, priorities, blah blah ... but pretty much each (of the cheaper ones) is missing something that I need

 

I was thinking of just getting a Mac Mini to get into Mac and then maybe as my next laptop, a few years down the line, I'll fully make that switch. The only thing is by the time I fully max out the Mac Mini the pricetag isn't that mini. I almost feel I should spend, granted a lot more, but get a full fledged machine with a dedicated video card and just go that route. But then it's over a grand for the Mac Mini loaded or close to 3 grand for the MacBook Pro. Man my wife is not going to be happy with me! Maybe I should just go the Mac Mini... ahhh...

 

what about the iMac?

 

I'd want something small, laptop or MacMini to use my 22 inch LCD I already have... I think it's going to have to be the Mini, makes sense. I just can't do anything too crazy on there because of the integrated video card, but I probably don't really need it anyways.