MBP First Impressions: Part III

In my 3rd installment of my first impressions series on the MacBook Pro, I will focus on the applications I use and how well they run on the laptop. Firstly, the hardware does not disappoint in supporting the software I need to run. I’m a software developer in the Microsoft Windows world, so I needed something to allow me to work with development tools. Boot Camp came in to the picture recently and has provided the ability to run Windows on Macs. That is one of the core reasons which made my switch possible.

Running Windows XP Professional via Boot Camp is exceptional. You get amazing speed using the Mac’s hardware. Boot times are good, but not as great as if you were booting into Mac OSX. I average about 40 seconds to get to the Windows Desktop, and most of the startup applications load by then. In Mac OSX, the boot time is much faster, at around 25 seconds. Boot times are actually of little consequence these days for me, as long as the computer is ready for use within a minute.

The applications I use under Windows include Microsoft Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. I also have iTunes here as well as the Zune software. I am actually impressed in how well they all work at the same time on the Mac. I couldn’t be happier.

Using VMWare Fusion to run Windows along-side Mac OSX is where the true measure of the hardware comes to play for me, as I use this to get the best of both worlds. Boot times for XP using Fusion is a bit longer than if I used Boot Camp, as expected. It takes about one minute to get to the Windows desktop. Many things run smoothly on the virtualized Windows image, just a minor delay in opening up stuff. Running the same applications as above gives me similar performance on average.

In conclusion, I am still happy that I made the switch to use Mac hardware. I’m playing around with iLife now, and will soon hope to have a review on it.

You can find the earlier editions of this series at the following links:
First Looks
Second Looks

 

I would like to echo your positive comments about using a MBP as a Windows development system. I am a software developer and work in Windows about 80 - 90% of the time. The 10% that I am using the Mac apps, such as iLife apps and other small apps, is truly inspiring.

I am running Win XP and Vista in two separate virtual machines via Parallels. I have a Thinkpad T61 that came with Vista that was virtually unusable because of all the lockups, slow response times, and generally poor performance and I initially thought the problem as Vista. In part, it is, but running Vista on my MBP is much more rewarding than on the T61.

I'm in a position where I need to be able to run XP because I have some apps that will NOT run in Vista. Parallels allows me to run Vista as my primary development OS, switch to XP when I need to run one of my apps that will only run on XP, and OS X for my image and video editing needs.

I wish the MBP has a longer battery life, but I'm never too far from an AC outlet and an extra battery for long trips helps.

I've honestly tried to go back to my T61.. even did a full re-install of Vista Ultimate after buying my own copy and it still seems sluggish and unreliable. The T61 is similarly configured to my Santa Rosa 2.4 MBP.

Apple and Parallels made it possible for me to even consider a MBP, and now that I have, I've become sort of an Apple fanboy. It's a phenomenal combination of hardware and software.

 

I'm curious. When you switch between Bootcamp and Fusion do you have to reauthenticate WIN XP? I'm having that problem.

 

Nice review, dbam, and great to hear you're enjoying your MacBook Pro .

 

I heard your plight in the thread you started, Teacher. I am not sure on why it is asking to activate twice for you. I do have a different problem though that maybe someone can answer for me.

When I boot into Windows XP via Boot Camp, my system clock is OK. However, when I switch back to OSX the system clock loses the time zone setting. What gives? I thought this was fixed in Boot Camp v1.4?

 

Good question about the clock. That also happened to me. I guess these programs are still a little buggy.