VirtualBox -- just how seamless is it?

Thinking about getting a 15" MBP for the great hardware design and ability to still run whatever OS I choose. Not an Apple "fanboy," so to speak, but I appreciate the design (and ~7-hour battery life).

Unless I can get Evernote up and running the way I like, I'll need to use Microsoft OneNote quite a bit. My question is this -- given that I've never worked with OS virtualization / VMs before, just how seamless is VirtualBox running any given Windows operating system with Office running inside of that? Would my OneNote notebooks just be saved somewhere in my home directory in OS X, readily accessible for backups and the like?

Thanks in advance.

 

Office:mac also exists. I use parallels and it runs perfect. If you run solely windows, then i suggest you buy a windows machine. Apple's drivers are considerably bugged and your machine will thus have lower battery life in windows and it will also run hotter and may crash from time to time.

 

Well, this would be a switch for me. I enjoy Windows 7, but I've also never spent much time with OS X -- especially with Snow Leopard just about released.

 

Virtualization does slow down applications considerably, especially with complex programs. You probally won't have too much trouble running applications like OneNote installed inside of a Windows XP/Vista/7 Virtual Machine in either VMWare or VirtualBox. Still I'd probably run a dual boot of OS X and Windows if I were you. Nothing beats the stability and performance of a native installation of an OS. I do like using VMWare for running older operating systems. If you do end up choosing an OS to run virtualized, you should just go with Windows XP (or even 2000 if it is compatible with the software you need to run) as it will run faster virtualized then Vista/7.

 

You can always try Crossover Mac ( www.codeweavers.com)... it uses Wine, no Windows or virtualization needed... but of course it has its draw backs too cuz it doesn't actually work with everything.... but the things that do work, usually work well....

MS Office for Windows runs well... and i messed with OneNote which seemed to work, but I dont know enough about it to fully test it.

 

Codeweavers is pretty good. The standard version is only $39. I use it for MS Office 2003, viewing wmv files. It's good enough for many productivity apps.

I still use XP in bootcamp for compatibility reasons.

If you understand and can work with the limitations with each option (using virtualization, CrossOver Mac, Bootcamp), you should be good to go.

 

one thing you must consider is that apple runs windows but was not designed to run windows in 1st place. it was designed for mac os x. so, we all know that apple is not a good friend of microsoft. so, while the mac supports windows, it might have some bugs while running windows. things you would usually here mac users complain is that the mac get quite hot under windows. why? because apple didnt write proper power management softwares/drivers for windows. why do you think that the cheap plastic dell gets more run time on windows than you $2000 macbook pro?? The reason is that dell designed its laptop with the sole intention of running windows and its engineers have developed softwares to maximise runtime/efficiency of the cheap laptop. Take my case for example, i had a dell vostro 1700(17") before owning a mac. Why did i buy a mac? Because it was made up of metal(supposedly more durable), ran OS X, supported windows, and because it was a mac(wow effect). The aftermath of it is that i program more in windows than Unix at uni and i'm stuck with 2hrs battery life with screen set to lowest brightness and the ability to get random freezes from time to time on windows. That quite great considering that i spent twice more than the average Dell to buy a more expensive mac to finally use it merely 50% of its full capacity. Anyways, what's done is done, i really hope that snow leopard will be the holy grail for us, mac fellows who dual boot their laptops.

 

we'll have Snow Leopard this Friday.. so we shall see....

 

YES!!! I really hope apple lives up to our expectations.

 

Just to correct his post above. Macs can run Windows fine, although not perfectly compared to OS X.

This is usually due to poor driver support that can be easily alleiviated in most cases by third party drivers and tweaks. It's a misconception that it's a "power management issue" and that macs are "unstable and hot" under Windows. The reason behind this issue is actually the 9600GT being the only available video card for Boot Camp, utilizing the 9600 GT generally raises temperatures and uses more batteries.

Boot Camp 3.0(snow Leopard) so far is doing fairly well with Windows 7 and Windows XP when it comes to stability and usability. Hopefully, Improvements to Boot Camp drivers that allow for more agressive battery saving features would be even better (ie 9400m support).

However just to clarify, getting 2 hours out of his batteries from a mac running a 9600GT graphic card is quite impressive, most PC Notebooks top out at that mark on a lower end card, so I wouldn't say that Macs are any different when it comes to power management.

 

I have a 15" MBP being shipped out within the next day or two. Let's see if I can make it work for me...

 

If you just bought it... hopefully it'll have Snow Leopard on it... and not have them make you pay an extra $10 and do it yourself.

 

if it doesnt come with sl, they will supply it free of charge for you since you will still be within the return period

 

Lets see...
The most recent MBR comes with a 73Whr (<-capacity) Li-Po battery. My HP8510p originally shipped with a 73Whr Li-ion battery (8cells, less charge cycles, actually started out as around 71.5Whr, they are never perfect). It has now degraded down to around 66.5 Whr capacity. I get 3.5hrs with wifi on with T8300 (35W peryn), and a HD2600 (2 gen old mid range GPU, build on the same 65nm process as the 9600mGT), other components including a more power consuming CCFL backlit WUXGA screen, also note that the Intel 4695 runs on wireless N most of the time which consumes more power than when connected to B or G.

Just to add, the 9600mGT's power consumption is 23W and the HD2600's is around 30W. (but that part we can forget as both GPUs will be downclocked when not on AC)



Ok, just did a check, the earlier MBP did come with a 50Whr Li-po battery. But does a mere 16.5Whr make up for the extra 1.5hr of battery life I am getting even with more power consuming parts? I don't think so. ^^

 

I always said that something is wrong with his MBP's battery! +his mbp is from last gen,so it has smaller battery! I get 3.5 hours on my dell with 9cell and 4 hours on hp with 6 cell!

 

No, my battery health is 99%...it works fine. while i've been having 4+ hours on os x, my battery life under windows is abysmal. 2hrs with power saver and screen brightness set to low. I've read somewhere on the apple forums that apple did not include a 'battery controller' (i think it's a driver) for windows. while my dell vostro 1700 had 3+ hours on battery, i find it weird that my mac which has led backlighting, 9600mgt vs 8600m gt on my dell, smaller screen and many other 'powersaving features', makes it only 2hours under windows. If my battery had a problem, surely it would also have affected my os x battery life but weirdly this happens only under windows.

 

I find that any of these 3.5 hours, 3 hours+, numbers hard to believe. Are you all simply just looking at the Windows estimated time remaining or are you really using it til the battery runs dry and check your stopwatch?

 

i watch english premiership matches pretty often. i watch while surfing the internet at the same time on my mac. i start a match with 100% full capacity and at the end of the matches, my battery comes down to approxiately 50%. so i guess i could have used it for ~2hrs more.

 

That is a complete misconception. When it was new, my Dell Latitude D600 could easily get 3-4 hours on a single charge, just taking notes in Word and web surfing with wireless. Even without wireless I could go an entire 3 or 4 hour flight and have plenty of battery left over Even today after 5 years, I can still get 2 hours on a single charge doing the same thing. This is real world usage, not just looking at the estimated time remaining.

 

Hmm, perhaps the 9600 GT under windows is not being downclocked on a voltage level. I noticed that under Nvidia System tools the GPU temp always sits around 60+ degrees on idle, which shows that it may be either using more voltage than it should or not being downclocked enough. Now I wish there was actual voltage readings from the utlities, any ideas if we can get some voltage consumption numbers via Windows?

 

also i have seen other laptops which have the same gpu have better battery life than my mac under the 6cell battery 3hours something i believe. how can you explain that? the led display and processor should allow better battery life i imo but this isnt the case. even previous gen macs get better battery life than us.i know that their battery has a higher capacity but not by much.

 

I'm not misconceptualizing anything, it's not real world simply because all your numbers are rounded up or down 1 hour. The difference between 3 hours to 4 hours is a huge variance and doesn't sound accurate at all, it's like if I asked you how much you paid for your MBP "Um, 2000 - 3000", Right. It just sounds to me that you're giving numbers from approximation off the top of your head, and not from actual physical tests with "real" numbers. That's what I'm getting down to and simply the root of the problem.

It would only make sense to compare a PC with very similar battery and system configuration and test the battery life on that unit compared to the UMBP under a Windows operating system. I have reason to believe that under those circumstances(ie; chipset, gpu, cpu etc) it would likely be very similar, if it's not, then we have a clear cut point and reason to ask Apple. Speculation amongst other configs will have no significant meaning (ie; ATi chipset, ie; Intel IGP etc).

 

@d3x, try using nvidia system tools(aka nvidia control panel) to downclock your gpu. this program was previously called ntune.

 

i guess our macs have nearly the same battery life under windows. one day i started surfing the net at 9pm and the battery died at 11pm. give or take 5minutes. i have tried downclocking but the results do not change by much.

 

Luke no offense. But you have seen other laptops.... In what way? Someone on a forum posting numbers or someone utliizing it in front of you and claiming that they "got" exactly 3 hours? Do you get my point? Neither of these are accurate sources and numbers we simply can't calculate the battery consumption level simply because the numbers are too "perfect" to be true, I mean how often do batteries end exactly on the hour?

Don't get me wrong guys, I'm not trying to pick a fight here and I'm not defending Apple in anyway, I'm merely challenging you all to actually get those numbers so that we have something to actually work with and not numbers that are completely guess work...

 

Even then there would be varied results, because of user (human usage) in the equation.

A controlled test would be ideal, and I'm willing to bust this myth or confirm the myth, if any of you are able to supply at least where I can get my hands on a PC system with similar specifications. Of course it would be best if a Mid-2009 MBP would be included since mine is the earlier 2008 version.

 

Didn't I teach you that technique?

Underclocking the gpu frequencies lowers temps for me, but doesn't significantly lower any battery usage. Leading me to believe that there "could" be an issue with the Nvidia chipset or GPU not lowering the voltage. The other issue that I think could surface is the 9400M, even though it's not enabled, is it still being powered up? These are issues that relate to Apple or even NVidia driver support that may be affecting our battery usage times.

 

Acer Aspire 5930G: 3hrs something battery life

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-5930G-Notebook.11910.0.html

hp hdx 16: 2 hours something with such a big screen.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Pavilion-HDX16-Notebook.16712.0.html

msi gx620: 3hours something with a much more powerful processor

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-MSI-Megabook-GX620-Notebook.13634.0.html

samsung R560: 2hrs 50 mins.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/User-Review-Samsung-R560-Madril-Notebook.11531.0.html

All of them having their batteries near the 50Whr.

 

i'am also beginning to think that the 9400m is still sucking battery power while the laptop is powered. perhaps apple didnt write any software to control it and it may be running at the hardware level...

 

Well, if you consider turning off WLAN and Bluetooth without surfing the web I'm sure the MBP, and sit completely idle with the screen at the lowest setting I'm sure it would fair a little better.

So considering that as not a real world app: Here is the time that was on the reviews above with WLAN enabled.

Acer Aspire 5930G: 2h 43 min

hd hdx 16: 1h 42min

msi gx620: 2h 26min

Sounds more and more similar to me...
The only one that stood out was the Acer

 

sorry for the misquotes D3x, but then, why is it that my dell got more than approximately 3hours while surfing on the net with wifi?