I'm Considering To Purchase A MBP, But Still Looking At Other Brands. I Have Questions.

I have a Dell XPS 410 Desktop PC which is very reliable that I bought last May and I might put it on ebay by the end of March to early April. I decided that I might purchase the entry level MBP after the sale of my Dell PC. I have a few questions about it.
1. Do they run hot like the last Core 2 duo MBPs from last year?
2. Can I use an external hard drive with the MBP?
3. Can I install Windows Vista on the external hd and have the MBP to bootup the external hd instead of its internal hd?
4. Is there any news that Apple would put the new intel cpus with the 3mb or 6mb cache in the MBP? I know that HP has this new cpu in some of their notebook pcs.

 

well I think you need to ask yourself why you want this computer. Filling out the FAQ in the what notebook should I buy area will be useful if you haven't done so already. But personally I found myself drawn away from the macs due to the super portability being a non-issue to me. So to answer #1 - if this laptop is going to be on a table or a notebook cooler for along time then this isn't too much of an issue and I've only heard of the MBP's with the 8600gt's getting hot.

#2 - I don't know for sure but I see no reason why you can't
#3 - Boot camp lets you do windows through the mac OS, I'd install both OSes on the main drive and then sue the external for music/movie storage
#4 - The penryn's should be out across all brands from all companies soon but if you really only want the latest processors and power then you *might* be better off getting something else.

 

1. They don't run as hot as the previous c2d mbp's but they still run hot if you are taxing the processor. Under normal usage you should be fine. For example, right now I am listening to music with itunes, surfing the web with safari and posting this message, and have mail and stickies running, and with my fans set at 3600rpm, the temp is 40 celsius, which is pretty cool.

2. Yes you can, but you will need to format it to fat32 so that osx can read and write to it.

3. I am not sure if you can do that.

4. Apple will be updating to the new penryn processors soon, so you will be fine if you are buying your mbp after march or early april.

 

1. Not as hot, but they still do get pretty damn hot if you're doing anything slightly demanding.
2. Yes.
3. Not 100% sure, but I agree with themanwithsauce's idea.
4. Yes most likely this month.

 

Ill just answer question number 3 since everyone covered everything else. Yes you can install it on a External drive BUT it would be very slow. Look at the transfer rate 420mbs vs 3.0gbs. This is not worth it, but it is possible. I would recommended doing as everyone else has suggested and partition you HD 2 times and use the external for media. However, if you got an e-sata card and e-sata external drive then yes its a good idea and will work fine, just not with USB.

 

Yeah apparently Apple is planning to put new Penryns in macbooks pro sometime next week, you can chek out www.macrumors.com forums for more info. And just wanned to add you can install vista on external drive but it will be dog slow like An7imatt3r has pointed out.
I am running 90 gb fro leopard and 50 gb for Vista, and it works great.
They do not run as hot, but still pretty hot when u encode media or do some super demandive work. i play Battlefield 2 a lot on it(using Vista), and trick that works for me is -if u remove battery when u game and it runs 3 to 7 degrees cooler, checked and verified with nvidia n tune.

 

For question #3, I think you can put Windows Vista on the external HD as when you perform the install it shows all the available partitions. The only way to know for sure is to try it out.

 

are you constrained by price? you might save money if you go with a dell or something similar.