Macbook Pro for running Windows - good/bad idea?

I absolutely love the new Macbook Pro 13" hardware. The unibody case and high quality panel makes me want to buy one right now. Nobody really offers anything similar. The problem for me, however is the fact that it comes with and runs OS X, and as far as I understand I will need to use Apple software (bootcamp) to run Windows. Is it at all possible to modify the computer to run Windows exclusively? And if I do run Windows through Apple software, are there any limitations to what I can do there or is it exactly the same as on a regular PC laptop? Running OS X is not an option, as alot of very specialized software I use is Windows only and I frankly dislike Apple OS.

 

I think because the motherboard is different you have to use bootcamp, and apple's crappy vista drivers. I've had no need to run windows on my macbook, but from what I heard vista is a bad experience. However I think people have better luck with xp. I'm not entirely sure though, but I don't think you can just boot up from a windows cd and install.

 

The current MBPs have an issue with their Cirrus Logic sound drivers. Sound is far too quiet and there seem to be issues with the microphone as well.

I play games with headphones so am not too badly affected, but it is an issue affecting a lot of people

 

This is a bad idea because a Mac hardware isn't designed to run Windows, it needs an additional layer "bootcamp" and some less than ideal apple drivers to work decently, and even then you'll get issues you won't get on a PC.

It's like buying a PC to run OSX, and then running OSX in a VM. It will work, but what's the point? You aren't getting an optimal install.

It's like buying an unleaded car and trying to find a way to get it to run on diesel. It's possible, but pointless and your car won't run as well as it would on unleaded.

 

good comparison captain fail

that sentence sounds like im being sarcastic

 

You make it sound like more than it is.

Macs are 99% a PC. The 1% they aren't is not relevant. They use standard fare PC laptop parts. They use Intel chips, nVidia chips, Realtek or whatever else chips.. My Unibody 17" uses the same nVidia graphics drivers as my Sager PC notebook uses. The Realtek audio drivers are also shared. The chipset is supported by reference drivers on nVidia's site.

Boot Camp isn't a "layer". It's nothing more than a partitioning tool and something that flips the current boot partition. The drivers are a mix of generic drivers and things Apple cooked up for their few "vertical" peripherals like the keyboard, trackpad, and camera.

People love pointing to EFI and saying this is some magical Apple thing that Windows can't POSSIBLY understand, but there's ways around that which people have been doing since before Boot Camp even existed. EFI is hardly an obstacle to things like Linux which can also run on a Mac without any Boot Camp support at all.

 

You're absolutely right. I believe windows vista and 7 supports EFI natively. Nowadays, almost all computer use EFI now, that includes those "PC". E.g. my acer aspire one netbook use EFI. My asus motherboard for my desktop use EFI. All of my computer in the past 3 years use EFI. The EFI on my computer just emulates the bios to maintain compatibility.

 

I dont particularly care about camera or sound card, if it doesnt work I can just disable both, as I dont ever use either for anything.

I am more concerned about performance penalties. Other than battery life, is anything else affected?

My main goal here is to get a solid portable laptop for work with a screen of acceptable quality without paying $2.5k for Sony Z series.

 

You're better off getting the Sony Z. What's the point of spending money on a Mac (which is not natively designed as a Windows machine, check out the keyboard layout) and trying to turn it into a Windows machine? You WILL have problems and you'll see in time that it wasn't worth it. One thing you will hate is the heat, Apple's drivers for Windows won't support the GPU well which causes it to run extremely hot. Mac computers are made to run Mac OS X. Get a physical Windows machine, and please spare us the crap about, "There's nothing in the PC world out there that compares to the Mac" as it sounds a bit patronizing to this forum to soften the blow that you don't want to run OS X.
Time after time PC fans come here to tell us how many more options and better choices in hardware there are in the world of Windows machines so I'm sure you won't have issues finding one. The Sony Z is an excellent competitor. Comparable to the Macbook Pro the Z starts at $1799 MSRP, I'm not sure where you are getting $2500. Again, what's the point if you have to deal with partially running computer just to get the Mac hardware? The idea of running Windows on a Mac is to bridge gaps in software while people are trying to switch over completely to OS X.

 

If not the superior Z, then there are other options from Dell in the Latitude / Precision range, the HP Elitebooks as well as the Lenovo's.

I suppose it depends on what you're willing to sacrifice in terms of style. There's a very good reason why I have a full complement of Crapbooks, and an equivalent complement of actually Windows-compatible machines.

 

What kind of work do you usually do or what softwares do you usually work with at work? Generally, if you're doing office work, the lowest end Macbook Pro will do.

The screen is quality is above standard, but by no means the best. It's probably as good as your Thinkpad T400.

System stability might be lower than a "Windows laptop" due to the imperfect driver.

The processor might be downclocked due to processor clock speed throttling due to the fact that the fan EC driver doesn't work very well in Windows. Thus in certain situations where the laptop is under heavy load, the laptop might "overheat" or near "overheat" thus the processor to go into "protective" mode and downclock the CPU. Of course, you can use SMCfancontroll to controll the fan speed, but the fan will need to be set above 2.5-3K RPM and according to many users, the fan noise is very significant.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else performance wise that might affect the macbook Pro.

 

If performance is an issue, don't forget the downclocked GPU's too.

 

I already used Latitude e6400, sold due to atrocious screen. 14" Elitebook has a rather crappy panel also. My current T400's panel is absolute rubbish as well. It seems to be impossible to find a non-tablet laptop that has a decent screen with good color representation and acceptable viewing angles. The only two notebooks in the size I want that have acceptable panels are Sony Z (way too expensive) and the 13" Macbook pro.

The overheating problems, however, are a bit of a deal breaker for me.

 

unless you are talking about video game performance, this should be a non-issue.

very few non-gaming applications use the gpu, and those that do aren't going to be affected by the fact that it is slightly downclocked.

nevertheless, you are at apple's mercy to get drivers for the keyboard and touchpad, etc. they are STILL wonky after all this time.

 

I personally think you should go for the MBP, but rather than running windows exclusively, just make your OSX partition smaller and your windows partition larger when your running bootcamp. Diskspace is so cheap these days (assuming your not talking about SSD) that you can get away with 30 gigs for OSX.

And i don't understand why people are suggesting him not to get a MBP, just because he wants to use windows 100% of the time and not OSX? Who cares, it's his machine he can run windows 95 if he wanted to, who are we to say what he can or can't do to his machine.

Ultimately, i think people on here just want you to be aware of the drawbacks of using a windows on a mac such as weaker driver support, lower battery life, hotter. Yes there are drawbacks, but if your technically savvy enough to search on google for a solution, you shouldn't have any problems. I hope this helps.

 

LOL! (asdfasdfasdf)

 

The problem with Windows on a mac is twofold. The buggy drivers cause various components to run at higher rates than required. This generates heat. Then there is a problem with fan control in windows which means windows doesn't turn the fans on most of the time, and even when they do it's not high enough.

The result is a very very hot Macbook Pro.

This is evident by restarting and booting into windows. OSX reacts by going "OMFG!!!!!!" and turning all the fans on full blast until the temperature returns to normal.

Windows on a mac is NOT optimal.

 

there is no overheating! overheating happens when you hit temperature limit of your GPU,wich makes it
a)to downclock
b)shuts down you computer

non of this happens-it just gets hoter under Win...BTW,I am pretty confident that apple is not writing their component drivers for Windows or Mac OS

 

does excessive heat happen under both Vista and XP? Would make sense if it did under Vista due to it being more resource intensive.

 

What about the 13-inch Glarebook makes it better than the E6400 / Elitebook WXGA+ screen (I presume you didn't cheap out, otherwise you'd be shooting yourself in the foot) or the T400? It's important to know what you place a premium on.

 

Apple has mediocre support for Windows. They try a lot harder optimizing the OSX experience compared to Windows. If there are some apps you really need on Windows all the time, consider getting a non-Apple based PC manufacturer.

You will get more of your money's worth running OSX on Apple hardware.

 

Well.. some people view "overheating" as running the laptop above their comfort range. The GPU technically counts overheating as 110 degrees celsius and the CPU is around 90 degrees celsius.

-Regular windows laptop usually does not go over 50-60 degrees celsius even when under extreme load in normal conditions.
-Macbook (pro) runs windows around 70 degrees celsius when under load or even light gaming.
You can decided whether it's overheating or not.

The "overheat" scenario happens under all windows OS. It's not because Windows use more resource than OSX, but because the faulty driver apple supplied for windows which causes the "overheating".

 

Windows doesn't cause "overheating" in the usual sense. It causes hardware to work harder than it needs to while not maintaining adequate control of the temperate and fans.

The problem is two-fold, and both are software/driver related unfortunately.

 

Extremely poor contast ratios and very inaccurate colors that are impossible to calibrate. If measured most of these business notebooks have contast ratios below 150:1. Premium screen options simply do not exist. The only real option is dell Precision m4400 with RGB-LED panel, but it is a 15.4 inch chassis. My wife has a unibody Macbook and the screen is very much superior to my t400 with LG LED panel. I also happen to prefer glossy screens for everyday work inside.

 

So your worried about calibrating your laptop screen? And you like glossy screens? What exactly do you do on your laptop that requires a calibrated screen? And why are you not just using an external monitor. Even high calibrated high quality laptop screens are no where near as accurate as external monitors. If your not doing any professional graphic work I don't see how it matters really, you might not even be able to tell the difference. Also Apple uses the same screens as a lot of other laptop manufacturers, I know my clevo's screen is the same model as the macbook pro 17inch. So there are a lot of pc alternatives with similar screens, just because your t400 might look inferior to you doesn't mean all pcs have worse screens. The macbook (not pro) is notorious for its horrible screen.

 

For the record, I have my unibody 17" MBP, and running either OS X 10.5.7 or Win7, with only the 9600M GT enabled, I don't notice any extra "effort" on the part of the system to run Win7. The fans don't spin any faster, the system certainly isn't any hotter, and it seems perfectly fine.

Maybe Windows 7 has a better driver or something, I don't know. I am using the latest nVidia GPU and chipset drivers.

 

ORLY?

Regular windows laptop...yeah,right!

Do you want me to post screenshots of termal results while gaming on my notebooks?I got 90C+ while gaming on my m4400,and ~85 on my hp...and consider that they are almost 2x of thicknes of mbp.

I say again that it is not overheating...it is normal heating

again,why are you sure that apple is writing their drivers?

 

Please post some CPU thermal result of your non-Mac laptops while gaming.

BTW... did you see those "" "" marks on both sides of "overheating"? Overheating can be subjective. I call overheating as 75 degrees on my intel atom netbook, but I can barely feel the heat on the bottom. I measured with a infared thermeter and it's only around 35 degrees on the bottom of the netbook. My desktop comptuer usually idles below 35 degrees and below 55-60 degrees under 100% load.

And where did I say apple wrote their own driver? I wrote "the faulty driver apple supplied"

 

the "problem windows drivers" are apple developed.

whether they wrote them using a team in house, or outsourced the job, is really a moot point. apple paid for those drivers to be developed, and they are responsible for their quality control because they ship those drivers with their operating system.

 

Don't ruin a mac with Windows

Anyway, the Mac input devices are made for OSX and are a PITA to use in Windows. The placement of the command key often makes me screw up shortcuts under Windows (Ex. CTR-L is a shortcut to the Firefox web address bar. Mistakenly pressing CMD-L will log me out of Windows). The touch pad drivers also suck and a lot of the multi-touch gestures don't really work. I may be wrong, but I don't think the two-finger tap for a right click works under Windows (you have to hold two fingers to the trackpad and press the physical mouse button). I also find scrolling to be very jerky.

Additionally, expect your battery life to be cut in half under Windows.

Simply put, the awesome usability of the Mac platform is tied to OSX. The software is what makes the Mac platform what it is. Strip that away and they become "form over function" devices.

 

I'm writing this in Windows 7 on a 13" MBP right now, and I can tell you that there are a lot of tiny bugs/missing features when compared to Mac OS. While it doesn't hamper basic functionality, it will often annoy you. I suggest buying a PC.

 

What about battery life when running windows 7 compared to OS X ?
How do you run windows 7 ?

 

What about battery life running windows ?
How do you run windows ?

 

Battery life is pretty terribad. The idle power consumption is much higher in windows.

 

how do you know? I thought device suppliers write drivers!

 

Yours must've been the WXGA CCFL. Both the WXGA LED and WXGA+ LED can easily be used in sunlight, thanks to their 270-nit average luminance and matte finish.

 

Its not the sunlight usability that bothered me, its -poor black levels which resulted in horrible contrast ratios.

Here is a pic comparing the LED (LG WXGA+ LP141WP2 model) panel on my T400 (left) with an older Asus G1S (right) CCFL screen with very good contrast with proper blacks. Both have same black background wallpaper. Colors can be adjusted, black levels cannot which makes majority of these business-class panels terrible. And this is the panel that is supposed to be the best (it only gets worse from here).

Like I said before my wife has a unibody macbook and black levels are same as on the Asus. Unfortunately she will not let me experiment with windows on her machine.

 

I was pretty dead set on buying a one of the new MBP 15'', the top-end, but this topic is beginning to make me reconsider that

I, like to topic starter, intended on using mainly windows (windows 7 in my case, for gaming needs - not intended in hardcore gaming but rather tf2/wow and some random games) but also needed OSX for university work (compiling code thru the console) so in my mind i would have my win7 for everything and OS X as some sort of better linux.

But from this topic i get the impression that using a MBP in windows more than in OS X turns out to be a bad experience due to overheating and missing functionality from windows drivers.
That, plus the graphic card on the MBP (9800GT 512 RAM) seem to create a even more unfavorable scenario for running windows games on a mac, since the card isn't all that powerful and its performance is even more hampered by the windows support.

Was so sure a MBP was right for me, with the beautiful form factor (which is very important for me) and all around durability, now i'm not so sure it can fill my needs :/

 

IT IS NOT OVERHEATING FOR GODS SAKE! HELL,MY DELL IS IDLING 60C and not OVERHEATING!

only missing functionality is slightly bad battery life!

And the card is 9600gt...and yes,it is bad idea to get mac and mostly run windows

 

-Nvidia doesn't usually write their drivers. Almost always, the OEM or 3rd party writes them. E.g. Asus graphic card division writes their own drivers for nvidia graphic card. OEM can also write their own bios for the graphic card
-OEM writes their own bios/EFI for sure. That's a givien. That means they also wrote the power management features in the BIOS for the EC.
-Since apple is the "OEM" it's responsible for a lot of the drivers for Windows.

 

I hope Snow Leopard comes with Bootcamp 3.0 and gives better Win7 support >_<

 

I've got an early 08 MBP with the dreaded 8600M GT. I had no problems finding, downloading, and installing the latest drivers from nvidia's website.

 

nvidia always wrote desktop drivers and now provides them for notebooks.

But that sounds ridiculous-so intel develops CPU,and then every company provides their own drivers?

 

how much worse is the battery life? how many hours can one expect with the new mbp

 

~30% worse...

 

2-3 hours. Though, the actual numbers depends on your ussage patterns.

 

How is you experience with your MBP under windows 7?
Does everything run like you want it too, or are there a lot of problems with bootcamp drivers?
What about gaming under windows 7 for you?

Tbh 2-3h battery life under windows is good enough for me, since if i'm gaming i'm plugged in and if i'm working (which is when i could use the extra battery life) i'm under OS X.

I like windows very much so, and it very rarely gives me problems, but in all honesty everything i do in windows i can do in os x, except playing games that have no support for mac.

 

I haven't used Windows 7 very much, TBH. I had XP on my Windows partition and put off switching to W7 because I didn't feel like reinstalling everything. On XP, I was able to play Far Cry 2 on autosettings (pretty, but not OMG!! pretty), and MLB2k9 with AA off and medium-high textures.

I have had to send in my MBP for repairs twice (under warranty). One was a random hdd failure. The other problem I *think* was related to the GPU, but I'm not sure. I worked at a university that services Apples, so I just took the laptop to the IT dept and said, nicely, please fix this mess

I'm not the best one to comment, since the newer MBPs have a different GPU. I'm sure the new ones will still run very warm when gaming in windows, but mine -- after a couple hours of gaming or streaming HD video, I could flip my MBP over and cook an egg on the bottom of the laptop. My solution was basically to stop gaming on the MBP. It's probably in good shape, now. The university guys were pretty good. But I'm paranoid, so I get my fix now and then on a console.

As for windows on a Mac, I'd say it's much more of an occasional annoyance than a constant problem. My fingers still want to hit the command key even when I know they should hit the control key. I still don't have right-click set up properly for my touchpad. Too lazy to figure it out. I just use a mouse. That sort of stuff.

 

I have run Vista x32 on the original white Macbook for over two-and-a-half years, using the original Bootcamp beta to the final version of Bootcamp, without any issues. I reformatted my Macbook at the start of every academic year and personally think it ran more efficiently than some other peoples' PCs. Proper maintenance is more important than the hardware, IMHO.

 

Thanks for your input chris-m and Iron Eagle, definitely put some perspective on some of the problems highlighted in this thread.

Do you have any trouble with fan speed/temperature/device drivers Iron Eagle?