my sister has a macbook pro but now needs windows

i know this is like blasphemy but she now is required to have windows vista or better for her job and she just got this thing a month ago. she doesnt care it she has the mac os really yes she likes it but.. can the current gen macbook fully support windows vista or 7 by itself.. she doesnt want to be bothered running boot camp and other ways to run windows stuff. she used all her allowed funds to buy this thing now she is a bit annoyed with the situation not with apple at all..but with the mess of the job etc..she will be running in windows all day long and some of the programs she is told will not work right running on a mac os running as windows...

so if she formats and wipes it clean can she run vista or 7 easily? im sure i can test it all out but since there are so many mac users i figured id ask first.

any help or info would be great.

 

It should be just the same as installing Windows on any other computer, though if the firmware is older, you may have issues with the bootloader.

However, not using Bootcamp is just plain silly. Bootcamp was explicitly created for this purpose, so I don't know why you would avoid it.

 

Lithus is right, bootcamp is the way to go.

Bootcamp is not some type of emulator or thing that runs Windows. Its a tool used to be able to install Windows and the drivers Windows needs so that Windows will run natively and directly on your machine just like any other Windows laptop.... it default to set it up to dual boot so you can have both OSes, but you can make most all the same go to Windows, and set the boot to always default boot into Windows.

 

The thing is that rebooting gets annoying very fast.
A lot of times I prefer having a bunch of VMs running on top of my fav. OS

 

Make sure she as the full version of Windows (not upgrade version). I'm planning to get Windows 7 in a month (it would be a waste of money of buying Windows Vista right now) to install on my MacBook Pro.

 

If you're only going to use one of the operating systems, then there's absolutely no rebooting required.

 

You can have it boot into windows all the time if you want.

 

So am I. But I don't think you lose anything if you buy now?

 

All copies of Vista purchased since late June come with a free upgrade to Windows 7.

 

Yeah but then you have to re-install.

 

No it is possible to do a direct upgrade from Vista to Win7 painlessly

 

Oh, well why can't you easily upgrade from Win 7 RC to Win 7 final. Stupid Microsoft.

 

Because unlike Vista, chances are you got RC for free

Ok bad joke lol

Anyhow, I agree that bootcamp would be the way to go if you want Windows on a Mac. Sometimes it's a bit annoying since sometimes they release drivers for bootcamp Windows and those are a bit iffy compared to the "pure" Windows drivers but what the heck, it still works.

 

Have her use Windows with BootCamp and you can make it so that everytime her laptop boots up, it will boot up to Windows instead of the MAC OS. I hope this helps. God Bless

 

okay ill take a look she is dropping it off to me this weekend.. thanks for the info!! im not a normal mac user so i dont keep up as much as mac stuff..

 

The unfortunate downside of this in-place Vista->W7 upgrade over a clean install is the *time* that MS itself has published estimates for completion... on the order of 1.5-3 hours minimum, progressing to 15+ for users with large numbers of applications and data amounts. It seems that this has not been as well publicized, however, as I don't see a lot of press about it and I would assume the public would be a litte grouchy over it.

Compare this to 30 minutes upgrade time for OS X 10.5 to Snow Leopard..... and I'm even happier I made the switch to Mac last October (although I still run W7RC in Bootcamp for occasional needs)

 

I don't know of any modern computer that would take 3 hours to install a clean version of Windows.

A clean install takes about 30 minutes, and I would assume an upgrade install takes slightly longer.

However, this is Windows Vista to 7 we're talking about. Leopard to Snow Leopard would be more synonymous to Vista to Vista SP2.

 

You can easily install windows on a Mac and run it as the sole OS. Bootcamp does essentially that.

The blog post you are refering to clearly states the test situation where upgrades that over 1.5 - 3 hours is where users have 40+ programs and over 200gb of data.

To propagate this information as an "average" install clearly shows a misinformed reader, an illogical conclusion, or just below elementary math skills.

Microsoft clearly stated that the upgrade process was not meant for machines upgrading from a beta product to a retail product. It is a situation untested by developers for obvious reasons and was blocked to keep novice users from making a critical mistake to their system.

But I can't speak for everyone in the human race obviously.

 

The upgrade took 2 hours for a machine used over 2 years with fairly new hardware (C2D) Processor.
Those who claim over 15 hrs are probably running on a P3 machine spreading FUD.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116754
Fixed!

 

As others have said, definitely use BootCamp and have it set to boot into Windows by default so she won't even see anything other than Windows throughout the boot process.

You just have to buy a copy of the Windows version of your choice (I'd go with OEM and save a few bucks - or if you're a TechNet/MSDN member yourself, well.......)

Don't worry about it, nobody's perfect.

 

Gosh, thanx for the tip and cordial response to my post - I guess I'll go pull out my daughter's Pre-K math primer for a review so I can catch up .

I never said it was an average install (and sites like MaximumPC also picked up the story when MS published it), but I've got essentially that amount of data and 20+ programs on my desktop PC and I don't consider myself a power user.