MBP 15" 2011 Windows ONLY?

Hello all,

As you can see from this thread, I am in the market for a new computer. When I first decided to buy a new laptop, I impulsively took a drive to the Apple Store before doing a single second of research and picked up the new late 2011 15" MBP (the sleek aluminum design drew me in). I got the 2.5gHz i7, 4GB RAM, 6770M, antiglare hi-res screen. First thing I did was install Win7 when I got it home.

Long story short, I had it for two weeks, during which I used both Win7 and OSX about 50:50. Those two weeks confirmed my suspicion that I am simply not an Mac guy. Windows is my OS. I ultimately took the laptop back and decided to look for a Windows laptop, but now am wondering if the MBP was actually a better Windows laptop than any of my other options.

OK, so finally, my question: is there anyone here that has a MacBook Pro running Windows ONLY (or at least primarily)? For how long? Any major issues (heat, stability, etc)? Would you do it again, or do you wish you had bought a native Windows laptop?

I'll summarize what I understand to be the major limitations of Windows on a MBP based on my personal experience and some research. Please correct or add as necessary:
- EFI issues with Windows-only setup(?)
- No dGPU/iGPU switching. dGPU only.
- No AHCI mode. (Workaround available, but breaks sleep).
- Poor driver support.
- Poor battery life.
- Heat issues(?)
- Limited trackpad use.
- Keyboard backlight always starts on max.
- Keyboard layout is non-standard for Windows. No way to swap or add keys.

Looking forward to your experiences and input.

 

Why do you want MBP 15? Just for style factor?

 

Yes, I do like the design, but that is not the only reason: I've found it difficult to find another computer in that size/weight with a quad-core i7, decent GPU, and antiglare display greater than 1366x768. All things that I would ideally like to have.

I can get a computer with a similar sleek design, but it would be relatively underpowered. I can get a similarly (or better) spec'd system, but it would likely be 1.5" thick, and >6.5 pounds.

My other primary consideration as of this moment is the Alienware m14x, which is comparable with the following glaring (no pun intended) exceptions:
- High gloss display.
- Thick and heavy.

 

The general consensus on this forum is that if you JUST want to run Windows, you shouldn't buy an Apple. Boot Camp was really meant "for occasional use," not as a permanent solution, and the driver issues demonstrate that. I found Boot Camp good for occasional gaming, but I wouldn't have wanted to be using it day-in-day-out. Too many driver issues, too many features that you pay substantial $$$ for when you buy a MBP not available for you (switchable graphics, multifunction trackpad).

I wouldn't start with the M14x given that it's got a 14" 900p screen (and glossy, too, which you don't want) inside a machine the size of most 15.6" desktop replacements. There are four laptops you should consider. Each involves a compromise, but they all substantially undercut the price of an MBP 15 + Windows 7.

Vaio SE (starts at $999, available for inspection in person at a Sony Store)
Upsides: gorgeous 1080p 15.5" matte screen, thin and light (4.4 lbs, a pound less than the MBP 15), 6630M GPU.
Downsides: unremarkable battery life unless you attach a sheet battery, which adds half an inch and half a pound; only available with dual-core i5 and dual-core i7, not quad-core i7. Edit: but reading through your intended use, I really think an i5 would be adequate.

Vaio F2 (starts at $979, available for inspection in person at a Sony Store or a Best Buy, and you should watch the video review in my sig)
Upsides: even more gorgeous 16.4" 1080p matte screen, quad-core i7, 540M GPU, great build quality, great keyboard, respectable speakers.
Downsides: thick, heavy (6.85 lbs).

Samsung Series 7 ($1150, available intermittently at Best Buy or Amazon.com)
Upsides: 6750M (with 1 GB memory) and quad-core i7, matte screen, price, looks very similar to a MacBook Pro.
Downsides: availability has been spotty, quality of screen is unimpressive, only has 900p resolution instead of 1080p, case has some flex, styling is disappointingly derivative (instead of unique like the Sonys).

HP Envy 15 (price TBA, just announced, more info here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...-17-first-look-good-design-3d-discussion.html ):
Upsides: the 1080p Radiance screen is back, solid construction, good performance hardware, great looks.
Upsides: not available yet, no real reviews yet, no detailed spec sheets yet, Radiance screen might be glossy (I'm not sure).

 

How could I forget the Thinkpad W520? Just under 6 lbs with a quad-core i7, a Quadro 2000M, and a 900p matte screen, and it comes in at $1,599. Add another $200 for a matte screen. Fantastic keyboard, fantastic build quality.

It's not "sleek" or "sexy"--it's as conservative as a charcoal two-button suit--but it's not exceptionally thick either.

You may also want to look at HP Elitebook and Dell Precision business-class mobile workstations. Like the Thinkpad, they're more expensive than the for consumer-oriented models I listed, but matte screens should be easier to find, and you should be able to track down some pretty powerful CPUs and GPUs.

Edit: I just read through that thread you linked, and I realize a lot of this is repetition. Oh well, at least you know everyone's on the same page, right?

 

You hit the nail on the head.

You'll also have firmware update issues. Most companies release occasional firmware updates for their hardware with a windows based installer. Apple releases firmware updates through OS X only. You'll forfeit those updates by removing OS X completely.

 

Appreciate the input, all!

 

hp 8560w ...is the answer ....

will test soon a mbp with win 7 and post ..

 

Also, a DV6t would fit you well, while beinf available now.

i7 Quad
6770M
1080p screen
Excellent battery life w/9 cell.

Its also relatively inexpensive with coupons, and has good build quality. I also think it is very appealing to the eye, but that is up to you.

 

Out of curiosity, why would you give the HP 8560w the edge over the Dell M4600 and the Lenovo W520, which I am also considering? (See my main thread here).

Interested to know your thoughts on MBP with Win7. As I said, I tested it for about two weeks, and found it serviceable at best. By no means ideal, for the reasons I listed above.

Briefly checked it out, and as far as I can see, there are no quad core options for the DV6t?

 

HP Pavilion dv6 and dv6t Quad Edition series | HP Official Store

Dv6t Quad Edition, all i7-2xxxQM CPU's.

 

It's hard to find a laptop as compelling as the MacBook Pros in terms of design and quality. The other known brands, Dell, HP, etc just don't care to have the same level of attention to detail as Apple has.

So it's completely understandable that there are people who want to use MBPs but with Windows instead. However, it cannot be recommended for already stated reasons.

I used to be fond of ThinkPads before, and I still think they are the first brand I would check out if I buy a PC laptop again. After that, I would check all the other brands, to see if any of them somehow managed to produce a good quality laptop. But that's usually not the case.

Service/warranty also comes to mind. 3 year international warranty, onsite or leave to a repair shop nearby is my criteria. Anything that makes you have to send the laptop to another country for repair, waiting weeks, etc, is immediately off the list. Therefore, Asus/Acer/Sony is usually never on my list. There are other reasons to avoid those brands too. But that's my personal opinion.

 

alienware? they're pretty stylish, but expensive

 

Why not the dell business line?

3 year on-site standard, terrific build quality.


Sent from my iPhone with Tapatalk

 

You know what i think?
As you didn't use OSX fullheartedly and only ran it 50%, i think you should go for it all the way and test it, not only half time, it's like half assing it and just get you to where "oh yeah i have windows too, let's go back there if i can't figure it out in OSX". If you see what i mean.

I've already configured pretty much anything in OSX to my liking and i feel very comfortable, i think others can go that way too, or at least i hope Because i know what you want out of it with a MBP.

If you use osx all the way, you'll be sure to sort out any problem you have, i myself have been running windows since windows 3.1 and recently went over to OSX and it works like a charm. Anything i can think off is available for OSX, hope that is the case for you, google is your friend to find it out.

 

get a thinkpad....it's what they use in space...macs LOOK pretty, but thats about it =)

 

Hard to get rid of the windows partition if you play games though.

 

Alienware isn't expensive compared to the Macbook Pro 15 or 17. Bulky, certainly. Garish, arguably so (it's subjective, after all). Expensive, not if you're cross-shopping MBPs. The M14x can be had fully-loaded for the price of a base MBP 15, and the M17x can be had very, very well-equipped for the base price of an MBP 17.

For me, the three brands that are go-tos if you're the sort of person who likes MacBook Pros (preferring good tactile feel and good hard-to-substantiate stuff like screen quality, keyboard feel, no excessive bloatware, etc over best-performance-spec-bang-for-the-buck), but you want a Windows machine:

Sony Vaios (specifically the SA, SE, F, and Z): for multimedia-oriented consumers and prosumers.

Alienwares: for gamers and X-files fans.

Thinkpads: for hardcore business users and/or keyboard snobs.

I'm not saying all other brands are bad, but they can be very hit-and-miss, particularly on intangible stuff like keyboard feel. For example, I can't deny that the HP Pavilion dv6 offers great bang for the buck, but I hate the keyboard feel, and the ones I've looked at had uneven panel gaps and generally didn't exude a feeling of high quality.

 

I am interested in the topics I quoted. Could you elaborate a bit on them.

I assume poor battery life and heat issues go hand in hand with the dedicated GPU always being active. But is the trackpad further limited than the only gestures being two-finger scrolling and two-finger rightclick? And I am most interested in what ways the poor driver support shows (besides limited trackpad use and no switchable graphics). Also, as far as I know there is a tool to remap keys - it was linked in some thread here in the Apple notebook forum.

 

The poor battery life and heat are partly related to switchable graphics, but it's more than that. On my MBP 15 (late 2008), when gaming in OSX, the case would not get as hot as when gaming in Windows, even though the GPU was on in both situations. And when doing everyday tasks with the GPU on (the 2008 MBP didn't have automatically-switching graphics), the battery would last longer in OSX than in Windows. I don't know why that was, but battery life and heat production were both worse in Windows than in OSX, even when comparing GPU-on operation to GPU-on operation.

As for what "poor driver support" actually means, in addition to the switchable graphics, the cooling, the battery life, you couldn't turn the backlighting on the keyboard off. I'm sure there's more, but that was something that always stuck out in my mind. I've also heard that Apple's SSD options don't run as fast in Win 7 as they do in OSX, but I had an HDD.

 

Poor battery life.
- To quantify this, in OSX, I was able to get 7+ hours; in Windows 7, with similar activity, max 4 hours. I think this primarily has to do with full-time dGPU. I'm not sure what else is contributing to this.

Heat issues(?)
- See above.

Limited trackpad use.
- Two finger scroll works, yes, but significantly worse than in OSX (not accelerated; too fast sometimes; too slow sometimes), no gestures (2, 3, or 4 finger). The only thing that does work as expected is 2 finger right click.

Poor driver support.
- Bootcamp drivers just suck. GPU stands out here (both iGPU and dGPU have either nonexistent or suboptimal drivers). Trackpad. Didn't have any other issues in my two weeks, but I'm sure I would have with more time.

Keyboard layout is non-standard for Windows. No way to swap or add keys.
- For me, biggest annoyances are the lack of delete, print screen, page up, page down, home, and end. Also, Left Fn and Left Ctrl swapped, and Left Alt and Left "Windows key" swapped. This was really hard to get over. If you know of a way to fix those issues, please do let me know.

Keyboard backlight always starts on max.
- As far as I know, no way to fix this. Clearly not a big deal, but quite a nuisance.

 

Thank you for your input. Fortunately since I am interested in the MBA, dGPU issues like poor battery life and heat wouldn't be an issue for myself.

Regarding the keyboard, take a look at this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/596982-windows-7-mbas-primary-os-review-guide.html. The author names two applications - Autohotkey and Input Remapper - to redistribute keys. Within the thread he also posts the configuration file he uses. Since I would be coming from a Thinkpad, I am luckily already used to the different position of the Fn key.

(If anyone wonders why I consider switching from a Thinkpad, my work pattern and requirements have changed since I bought the T42s back in 2005. Also, after testing the current T420s and X220 models at work, I have to concede that Lenovo's current quality is no match for the older IBM machines)

 

I've got several reasons for not switching to a Mac, but this ^^^ is one of the top reasons for sure.

 

battery life is still considerably worse than OS X on a macbook air. the system drivers in general are poor with respect to power management and contribute in a major way to the battery life issue, even without a dedicated GPU.

the trackpad is both a more serious problem and is more difficult to resolve than keyboard compatibility.

 

The MBP is really an OSX machine with the ability to run Windows. In Windows, mine idles at 60C with the fans at 6000rpm. Optimization is just really poor in Windows at this point. Drivers are almost never updated so you have to take that upon yourself. The keyboard functions of a Windows machine aren't really there and poor optimization is really poor.

I'm pretty sure you can't have it as a Windows only machine either, you'd probably still need OSX installed. Could be wrong on that though.

 

You can do windows only, but firmware updates are only delivered through OS X. You won't have access to those updates. They are infrequent, but tend to be critical.

 

It seems like firmware updates used to be infrequent but Apple has been rolling out quite a few of them this year. My early 2011 MBP has experienced 5 or 6 firmware updates this year alone and I believe one of them was supposed to help out with a bug that people experienced when booting to their Windows partition.

Either way, I guess I don't understand the appeal of running Windows as the primary OS on Mac computers when there are other solutions out there that are designed for Windows offering similar form factors, performance (often times better), and even lower prices. The HP Envy line comes to mind for MBP alternatives that run Windows and the slew of recent ultrabooks seems to be giving the MBA a run for its money. Either way, there are plenty of alternatives to Apple hardware if the primary purpose is going to be running Windows. Why pay more for a suboptimal experience? Because the notebooks look nice? Well, I agree that MBPs look really nice and they are often emulated but that isn't worth an extra price increase and a decrease in performance. To me, there is a problem when someone has to jump through 345987398457 different hoops just to get something setup the way they want it running software that the system wasn't really designed to run (though it can as an added bonus feature).

 

I have a bit of experience running Windows on my 13" MBP (Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 320M). Regarding trackpad drivers, Trackpad++ solves a lot of issues and makes the trackpad nice to use. There's experimental multitouch gesture support now in the latest version.

Regarding power management, I use PowerPlan 7, from the same author as Trackpad++. It helps a bit with enabling/disabling wireless radios and such.

As for drivers, I always get the latest stable ones from Nvidia. No problems there.

Just my $0.02. And I'm not affiliated with the T++/PP7 dev, I'm just a fan and user of his software.

 

If you *never* want to use OSX, then get a Dell Business or HP Elitebook. They have fine quality and very nice warranty support, even on-site, should you need it.

If you want some style, the Alienware is a nice alternative, perhaps a bit over the top for some but I liked it. The nice part is very performance oriented hardware, and I've had absolutely no issues with the hardware or Windows installs. My three (yes, three) AW laptops (1 m11x, 1 m15x and 1 m17xr3), have worked perfectly from day one.

And to finish off with some flame-bait: I cannot recommend any Thinkpad. The quality is suspect, finding the right model is abysmal, bloatware is obnoxious, included software is often buggy, and the warranty/phone support isn't as good as Dell or HP. After having quite a few of them (and sending most back) I couldn't recommend to anyone to buy one.

 

I've always primarily use Windows 7 on my Macbooks(13-17)

They didn't run any hotter than other thin and light notebooks. The touchpad was pretty good, in my opinion. Battery life was 5 hours with my MBP 13 running W7 X64.

 

And I have heard bad reviews and also dealt the cluelessness of the dell reps when I tried to order an AW online.

 

Hey, I appreciate both of your responses and input. Wonder if either of you has had any success remapping keys in Windows. See the thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/app...rs-successfully-remap-fn-key.html#post8211721

Thanks.

 

I never tried remapping, I was perfectly fine with the default layout.