Vista on MBP

I'm thinking of getting a MBP but will probably be running Vista at least half the time. So I'm wondering...for those who run Vista on their MBP, what's your battery life like? When I did a search for this I found the reported times to be atrocious (~ 1 hr). Just wondering if this has been fixed with the latest BootCamp. And how do you feel about general performance (including gaming)? Please also include your model. Thanks!

 

New Macbook Pro 2.16, 2GB ram.

I have no idea on the battery. I believe it would be a lot shorter since the laptop runs at least twice as hot under Vista, than under OSX.

General performance is really great. No driver issues. Aero works great. Vista feels fast.

Games? I tried. The laptop is capable of playing games, but, it already runs hot just using Vista, so, I tried, but ended up pulling a computer out of the closet to play games. This decision was totally mine and was optional. Part of the decision was to save drive space, since I have to run both OSes on a 120GB drive.

The laptop would play any X1600 capable game fine. In general, the MacBook Pro feels like a fast and stable way to run Vista.

To clarify, the laptop is not "too hot" under Vista. The fan does run at a low-medium speed almost constantly though. The upper half of the keyboard feels releases some radiant heat, and the metal parts of the case on the upper left of the laptop are also pretty warm. Not too warm, not about to burst in flames hot, but, it's a definite warm in comparison with running the MacBook Pro under OSX. I do hope this situation improves over time with Firmware and BootCamp, 3rd party fan software, tricks, hacks, etc.

Right now I just have the rear of the MacBook Pro propped up on a pickle jar lid about 1/4" lol

I do wish my model had the 256MB video card. It just was not worth the $500 price difference (nor is the 2.33 compelling compared to the 2.16), especially when Apple was cool and put a 1GB stick in 1 ram slot, so, for the FIRST TIME EVER WITH ANY LAPTOP FROM ANY MANUFACTURER all I had to do was buy 1 stick of 1GB ram at $68 and I was gold. Thank you Apple for finally not being retarded on this issue.

SUMMARY: MacBook Pro runs Vista a little warm, but like a boss.

 

Hrm, well, I'll be getting a new MBP from work and I'll be trying to triple boot it, with Linux, OS X and Vista.

So I'll try to end up running some tests on it.

 

If you're really going to be running Vista 1/2 the time, then I wouldn't really suggest a MacBook Pro sicne they are designed to run OSX.

 

The keyboard is an Apple keyboard.

The thing does run a little bit warmer than I would like, but this may (or may not) improve over time.

Otherwise, the only real difference is the EFI vs. BIOS for booting.

My MacBook Pro runs Vista very well.

 

Count, thanks for the mini-review! I'm not too worried about the heat issue...it'll be on my desk...as long as there isn't a meltdown, it should be good. Glad that the performance seems OK. Is the fan noise really noticeable, though?

Hollownail, triple boot should be interesting. Please post up your experiences when you get the chance!

Are you basing this on personal experience with Vista on MBP/some technical info or just general conjecture? I read this kind of "advice" all the time...it seems like a lot of Mac fans consider it a waste to run Windows on a Mac...but quite frankly, it's really none of their business what I do with my machine.

 

The fan noise is not bad. It's always on low, sometimes it goes to medium, and if you were compressing video or something that pegs the CPU, the fans would prolly go to high.

If you have any kind of TV or music going, you won't hear it at low or medium settings.

Mostly, it just seems like it might take a year off the fan's life at some point.

 

I don't think what you are seeing there is someone saying it's a "waste" to run Windows as a Mac fan; I think his point was more that if you were going to be using Vista so much, it makes more sense just to get a PC and run Vista on it normally.

Outside of the sort of fringe Mac zealots (the "UGH, why would you spoil a Mac by putting WINBLOWZ on it?"), I think you'll find most Mac fans perfectly understand and appreciate why someone would want to run Windows as well on their Mac.

-Zadillo

 

Last night the MacBook Pro ran pretty cool overall under Vista. Fans never left low. I could barely hear them at all with no TV or music going.

I swear, I think Vista is either kinda self-healing or adaptive or something. Problems kind of seem to fix themselves. So far anyhow.

 

WHy would you want to run Vista on a Mac. Vista is very unstable and gives lots of problem on a regular PC. I suggest if you want to run Windows on a mac do XP

 

It's not really anyone's business why he wants to run Vista and not XP. Considering this thread is specifically about running Vista on an MBP, this advice isn't really helpful or constructive.

 

I dont run Vista, but I do run XP extensively.

If you look at the delta between Vista and XP run times on similarly spec'd PC's you should be able to use my run times to extrapolate what the MBP will give you under Vista.

I consistantly get around the 1:50-2:00 hour mark on the MBP (15¨ C2D 2.33). Altering the screen brightness will buy or lose you 10-15mins, but this time is attained with it set pretty high. The main reason is my laptop is a glossy machine, and its hard to see out doors/under bright lights when the brightness is not set high. (I took whatever machine was available because I intend to swap the display out for a WUXGA display once i'm sure the machine is ok).

This time is based on:

WLAN always on
Web Browsing 60% of time
VPN to office
Occaisional Word/Excel/PDF viewer
VNC to other PC's
SSH to servers/routers/etc
Outlook Always running
Firewall, Anit Virus always on
MSN always on
Occaisional file downloads

So mostly medium to low intensity stuff. No encoding, but quite a bit of comms traffic and some encryption to tax the processor a little.

I also use my 3G data card which drops about 15-20mins of the battery life. Although I'm extrapolating as I've never used it from full battery to empty.

Running OSX I get almost twice this.

Hope this helps.

If you have anymore questions, fire away.

 

mtor

This sounds like personal opinion rather than fact? Do you have a link to support your statement.

For the record, I'm a Windows developer and I run XP (soon to switch over to Vista) on my MBP. I'm in Windows about 80% of the time using Parallels. This allows me to enjoy the OS X interface when surfing the web and using iLife for photo editing, etc., but still allows me the versatility of using my Windows apps for development.

My personal opinion is that Apple makes well designed, well engineered, and very stylish hardware; and if there was a PC maker who could match these qualities, then I might go for it. Currently, I don't believe there is, so I gave up my Thinkpad and went with a MBP. Love the LCD (perhaps the best on the market at this form factor), love the keyboard, and I like being able to enjoy Mac and Windows software depending on my needs.

Except for the cost, which doesn't really enter into my decision, I think the MBP is an outstanding choice if you're willing to spend the time learning how to use OSX and some of the peculiarities of the hardware when running Windows.

 

I say this because usually when using multiple operating systems, one is used much more often than others. 50:50 doesn't work because eventually you will favor one over the other. I say not to get a MacBook Pro if your intention is to run Vista most of the time because battery life suffers compared to what you get with OS X. Jumping through hoops to share data between OSs is also not the best use of time.

In any case, I just feel that if you will be using Vista 1/2 the time, it's better to get a Vista laptop. It will probably be cheaper that way too.

 

Count and 5to1, thanks for your posts. 5to1, how do you find the heat and fan usage running XP?

Has anyone had experience running Vista on a Core Duo MBP?

dagamer34,

Thanks for your concern but it's misplaced. Any decision to get a notebook (or most anything) in life is based on a cost-benefit analysis. You've posted the costs but fail to mention the benefits (which I think jjfcpa states quite well). In any case, as Zadillo mentioned, it would be great if people could stick to the actual topic of the thread. Thanks.

 

This article, and things I've read elsewhere... the Core Duo MacBooks seems to run hotter than the Core 2 Duo models.

http://www.macworld.com/2006/11/firstlooks/mbtemps/index.php

 

Coming from 12-13" notebooks I'm used to sticking my notebook on my lap. Also the fact that immediately before I got the MBP I was using a Toshiba R100 for a few months (after my second Sony SZ went back, and I gave up on that model) should put my comments in context.

I've never found the MBP to get too hot to place on my Lap. It definately gets hotter then my R100 did (as you would expect ). But not noteiceably more then our T43ps. The most difficult thing I find about using it is the added dimensions when compared to my previous notebook.

90% of the time I dont even hear the fan. Occaisionally however, it will get quite loud (imagine its at full blast at this point). This is usually when its been sitting somewhere with poor ventilation (i.e. using it in bed and the duvet obstructs the vents, or sitting it on a chair in which it sinks in slightly). Very occaisionally they kick in for no reason at all. Its not often enough to make it anything other then an interesting footnote. A reboot has always resolved this, but the fans also calm down by themselves after a few minutes. Suspect this is a bootcamp issue.

In short I dont consider either heat or fan noise to be much of an issue when running XP on my MBP. Without going for a thicker machine (or lower specs), I doubt you'll find anything which will give you significantly better useability in either of these areas.

P.S. The notebook might not get too hot to handle, but the damn charger sure does. Sometimes its like juggling a hot potatoe straight out of the oven

 

One caution about Vista under Parallels. While XP under parallels seems to consume around 15% of one CPU for overhead (idle windows system), that more than doubles with Vista - usually hovering around 40% of one CPU.

That could be that Parallels was/is not tuned for Vista yet or it could be I was not giving Vista enough memory or something like that.

I did little more than just try Vista and was unhappy with its overhead so went back to XP. Just a heads up.

 

Cool, thanks everyone for all the great info! I think I'm going to wait a bit longer to see if future BootCamp improvements improve the battery life/heat issues with MBP. If anyone else would like to post their experiences for others thinking of running Vista on MBP, that would be great.

 

It has been running cooler of late.

Not sure what has happened, but, the fans are nowhere near as active of late like they were the first few days.