Thinking about making the switch...back!

Oh boy, I'm getting Mac fever...again. Here's the deal:

I run a small Web Development business. I use Microsoft tools: Visual Studio and SQL Server (mostly), so the logical choice is to stay on Windows. But I'm not a logical guy. I actually was on the Mac bus not long ago... went through an iMac and then the 13" Macbook. I loved them to pieces, really.

After a while, I grew a bit tired of the really small form factor and having to launch a noticeably slower virtual machine to use Windows (I used VMware at the time). I went back to Windows pretty much for business reasons.

Now I'm getting the itch to go back to Apple. Why? Their design, look, and feel is a big reason. I also did more exploring when I was on Mac; researching stuff in my field away from the MS world that did open my eyes to new ways of handling development with my business. In a perfect world I would get the 24" iMac but since I run my own business I should stay mobile. Therefore I'm looking at the low-end Macbook Pro. Here are a couple of questions I have:

1.) How is Windows in Bootcamp? If I were to go back, I think I would go that route to have as much speed as possible. Especially since the low-end starts with 2 gig ram (grrr)

2.) I do play games. I don't think it's a make-or-break deal, but how would Call of Duty:WaW, TF2, and L4D run on the low-end Macbook Pro?

Any other suggestions or advice for me would be great. Thanks.

 

Bootcamp is great. I have setup numerous computers with Windows Vista dual booting and they report no problems. The drivers are decent, about the same as Asus. I would say to update you video driver if you tend to game a lot. On the Ram issue, 3GB+ is what I use for development, encoding, and gaming, but 2GB is workable if you must wait to upgrade. I have not used Parallels, but I have hear many great things about it. Possibly give that ago?

 

gengerald,do you have a mac?

 

Nope, way to many friends/clients with em. Seems they come to me when they need help. I get a lot of tinker time in with them. I know for a fact that two constantly game with COD4 on their old 8600M pros with no problems. We are not talking hi-res 100 frames, but a playable experience.

 

That's what I thought. Because my father tried bootcamp and windows XP and vista on his mac about 1 year ago, and it was crap. In gaming and otherwise (blue screens, etc).

If you need Windows, forget Macs. Period.

Oh, and support? No way. If you use Windows on your Mac, you're on your own.

 

The most important factor to using bootcamp and Vista, as I have not tested XP, is to make sure and tweak all the settings for performance. After running through optimization settings and such, the laptops do well. Out of the box, you are correct, in the fact that there may be issues. Discounting the entire system as crap without a wide base of survey does nothing but share personal opinion. If you had attempted it many times and changed your process with each failure, then I would view it as valid. I make the best attempt to not post out of my @zz. I play online with both a cousin (MacBook w/Vista + HL2) and and my other friends (on pro's with vista) on COD 4 or a couple steam games often.

 

this is a rash generalization. you CAN make windows work just fine on a mac, it just tends to have more hiccups than your usual PC laptop. i used vista ultimate for a while and had issues, but im now running xp sp3 and couldnt be happier... its actually what i take to my buddy's house when we feel like having a gaming night.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTRGDeGPPJo

There's some gaming on a MBP and COD5. However this video is from the COD5 beta, it shows the MBP still has no problem pumping that game out. =)

 

Well, this is a forum, not IEEE Transactions on Bootcamp. It is meant for sharing peer-to-peer help and share opinions and experiences, not for publication of scientific studies with proper citations etc (although those are welcome).

Plus, my father, who is quite computer literate (way more than me, he knows quite a lot of Windows and Linux), tried to "tweak" Bootcamp into working for almost 3 months before he fed up and just sold it and bought another laptop.

So, to the original poster: based on my opinion (to prevent further bashing), if you want Windows, don't use a Mac. Period.

 

Your father may have been using Bootcamp beta. I have had no issues installing Windows XP, Vista or 7 on any of my Macs. I don't use Windows day to day because all my work and personal software is in OS X but it's nice to have the flexibility. In Leopard Bootcamp runs Windows without a hitch.
Sorry guy, but your post isn't holding much water. Most reviewers have given rave reviews about running Windows through Bootcamp. It's best for you to leave this conversation to experienced users.

 

When you suggest that info comes from a person other than yourself is an absolute fact, all the while talking that person up like they are the be-all, end-all master in the subject, it makes it sound like you are full of it.

Even 3 years ago when bootcamp was in beta, I still got it to work.

To the OP; Just for the enjoyment of trying something new... Before you invest too much into Windows on your mac, give XCode a try. it does alot of things that visual studio can do.

 

I just talked to him. No betas. And he also tried installing only XP (i.e. no dual booting), and the same problems persisted. So it wasn't a dual-booting problem. And he asked help from his best friend, a 20-year Mac user, to set up Windows running, and he couldn't, said it was "just like that". He ended up selling the Mac to that very friend (who didn't want to run anything other than Mac OS).

As for your attitude: I really think that I am providing constructive feedback here, because once the original poster gets a Mac, he will not be a very experienced user (although he used a Mac before, so he is probably decently experienced). He might have problems setting Windows to run properly, and he should be aware of that possibility. But the truth is that one year ago, one experienced computer user had serious trouble to put Windows running properly on a Mac, even when aided by an experienced Mac user. I think this is important for the original poster to know.

If you want to keep saying "sorry noob, you suck, let the men handle this", please do so over private messages, we've hijacked this thread enough already.

As I said on my last post, I think I am providing constructive feedback here. If it sounds like arrogance to you, sorry about that.

Thanks for not having a bad attitude (well, not as bad anyway) as the other guy who bashed me.

 

HerrKaput was only expressing his own opinion on running purely Windows on a Apple computer, and it does make sense if you think about it. Regarding the example he provided, it would have been better if he had more details (for example what kind of tweaking his father was trying to do).

And HerrKaput, other members disagreeing with you does not mean you can call them fanboys. Doing so again will result in disciplinary action on your forum account.

 

Yeah, that wasn't a very happy remark from me. I didn't like being told that "I shouldn't post out of my behind" (I now noticed that it wasn't the same person).

Regarding details: I doubt he remembers very well, but one thing I do remember because I was with him: we tried a game of UrbanTerror (a quake 3 mod), and his MBP (15-inch) was struggling at 15-25 fps, which is appallingly low for that game. I remember we tried with both the GPU drivers included with the Mac and the latest at that time, with little difference. This was done in XP with SP2. We tried the usual Windows troubleshooting steps, like defragmenting, checking for CPU-eating processes, disabling/enabling pagefile, etc.

EDIT: He just told me that another thing that was bad for him was not having right-clicks on the touchpad. But that is a design choice, not a problem. If fact, AFAIK, in Mac OS you can do everything you want without right-clicking.

Another thing that didn't work properly was MATLAB, it refused to install. That application is vital for his work. Also, Office XP ran considerably slower than on my laptop at the time (a Fujitsu S6120 which was no match for the MBP in hardware terms). Therefore, we just convinced ourselves that XP was a no-go on a Mac both for work and gaming using Windows, hence my first post saying "Forget Windows on a Mac, period". In my defence, no-one here asked me for details (except for the last post), just dismissed what I said as "personal experience".

By the way, that wasn't the end of it: after all, he said, if OS X would do fine for his work then he would keep the Mac. But he ended up not liking the OS, so he sold the MBP.

 

I know some people who bought Mac OSX and are running Win XP, Vista, Windows 7 via Paralles or BC without any problems. Most of them told me:
"When you go to Mac, you won't go back (to the PC)". Heard that some people have problems with drivers but dunno. Don't have Mac, but thinking of it. Having the best from the both "world" in one computer is very attractive option...

 

all of these things have been fixed, if you dont know. nvidia has released beta notebook drivers that can be installed with ease on the macbook pro. just because one game doesn't work well for you (and years ago, at that) doesnt mean that its the end-all be-all.

apple released a trackpad drivers update that allows right clicking on the multi-touch pad within windows.

i've never had a problem running office in xp on my mac. granted, i've never had to install matlab, but i'm sure that someone out there has figured it out.

your experience is still not valid enough to make the blanketing statement that one should forget using windows on a mac.

 

Yeah, we kind of gave up on games too fast. But it's the only game he plays anyway...

I think my experience (or my father's, in this case) is just as valid as any experience you or other mac-users have had. You all made it work, we couldn't. I can think of two reasons: you all are more motivated to use Macs (my father was more like de-motivated by his previous laptop which kept crashing) and you are more knowledgeable with Macs. Still, the original poster has every right to know that there are SOME people, reasonably knowledgeable with computers, that could not make it work.

When I said "Forget Windows on a Mac", I left the "this is based on my own personal experience" part out, because if I didn't I would have to put it on every post I put here at NBR. It might have sounded stronger than I really wanted it to, but I still don't think it warrants the barrage reaction that I got here. Frankly, if you go to forums, you should be aware that the people here are not professional reviewers nor are they doing scientific-grade analysis -- it's just opinions and personal experience.

 

this is true, which is why we (as computer nerds) should abstain from making black and white statements. we're here to guide, not to direct, i s'pose.

 

1) It will be just like normal Windows

2) It should play those games fine on perhaps medium or high. But new high end games like crysis would be a struggle.

People don't usually buy macs for games and they don't buy macs to run windows. So you are in an unusual position lol. If I were you I would just buy a Sony.

I code in Python, PHP, MySQL, Postgres so I can do everything on my mac in OS X. You on the other hand would be in Windows so often that you would miss out on the real benefits of using a Mac at all.

 

Yup, I think you hit the nail on the head. I do enjoy some gaming, and I use MS dev tools. If I had an office job, I would buy a macbook without question. But since I run a small business and the tools I use are on the Windows platform, it just doesn't make sense for me to switch.

 

Bootcamp is kind of experimental. It is not fully supported by Apple. I would go Apple if you want to use OSX. If you want full-time Windows support, do not get a Mac.

 

i agree windows is not supported by apple but boot camp has left its beta testing long time ago. it just lacks the appropriate drivers which are written by apple programmers.

 

I switched to a Mac Book Pro for that same reasons the OP mentions. I have a consulting business and am running into more and more clients that are using Macs of different flavors. I wanted the flexibility that the Mac offers via Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion or Parallels. I would consider myself a Mac newbie, but not a computer/IT newbie as I have over 15 years of experience in the field.

My experiences using my Mac and Boot Camp, aside from my own gaffes, have been flawless. I started using Vista, but then switched to Windows 7 beta when it became available. I use Boot Camp for gaming and when I have to do Windows based troubleshooting at my client locations. I also have VMWare Fusion loaded with XP and Ubuntu for those occasions when Vista/Win 7 just isn't the right tool.

IMHO, based solely on my experiences, I would recommend the Mac/Boot Camp option without reservations.

-HM

 

That is encouraging to hear. And you bring up an interesting point - the trend towards Macs of late. It would be a bonus to be able to support Mac down the road for clients. That's definitely not my case now, but who's to say it wouldn't later on.

I'm still on the fence, but I have a feeling I'm going to get the base Macbook pro.

 

I went with the base Mac Book Pro as well. From all the research I did, the extra cost of the high-end Mac Book Pro wasn't worth the extra $400. If I did video editing or something like that, the larger L2 cache and 512MB on the video card might have come in to play, but for my needs it didn't make sense. I plan on upgrading to 4GB of RAM and probably picking up a bigger hard drive at some point, but that's about it.

If I had gone with the high-end pro, I'd be kicking myself now because the 2.66Ghz 15-inch version will be available soon for the same price...

 

I remember about a year and a half or so ago, a group of people tested World of Warcraft framerates on the intel imacs. They ran it in Vista on a PC, OSX on a mac and Vista on a mac and they found that Vista on the PC ran it with better framerates than OS X did, however Vista on the imac ran it faster than Vista did on the PC.

both the imac and hte PC they used for testing had the same processor, same amount of ram and the same videocard in them. Unfortunately, I can't find that article anymore.

But I just wanted to share it for interest sake.

-DL

p.s. I don't own a mac at the moment, but I've since had 3 and I -LOVE- bootcamp. Only little things in vista weren't working like brightness controls etc, but all the guts were there and it ran solid. I can only imagine how sweet Windows 7 would be on one of those 24"ers.

 

Also;

so long as you have the drivers, you can install just about any OS you can find now on the macs. I had a friend who had Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Vista and OSX all bootable in seperate partitions. It was kinda funny. (totally impracticle and a total waste of time, but kinda neat. hehe)

 

I am going to give you as unbiased of an opinion as I can. While I love Apple, if you are serious about running Windows software and need it for your career there is no sense in buying an Apple. Yes, you can run bootcamp and it will run fine, but I think you can find perhaps a cheaper notebook elsewhere. You do get high quality with Apple, but I don't see the reason to buy a Mac when you are reliant on Windows software.

 

After much debate, my third trip to the Apple store resulted in a purchase. I got the base Macbook Pro. It came down to a few things:

1.) I found more funds for my purchase
2.) I'm excited about exploring different technologies again.
3.) Way more mobile than my current 17" Gateway 7805.

I'm loving it!

 

I have Vista Ultimate installed on the MacBook Pro in my signature. I constantly use Visual Studio, as well as Microsoft Expression Web 2 in VMWare Fusion. The only time I ever boot into Bootcamp is to play a game. Otherwise, everything runs flawlessly in the virtual machine (though I would invest in an upgrade to 4GB of RAM- I know people say you don't need more than 2, but remember that's for one OS- you'll be splitting your RAM running a virtual machine).