are mbp's suitable for vs programming?

hello all, im gonna major in cs, im wondering if mbp's are suitable for visual studio, .net, or similar prog. apps on windows? i know you'll point out to get a pc, but that to me means the difference between purchasing a mbp and a m-15x, but i'd rather see any suggestions from anybody here at notebook review. thanks

 

You could run windows via bootcamp. But visual studio is not compatibile with mac, you need windows.

 

I have been using the new penryn based MBP for about two months.
I only use Vista on it. Although I have both Mac OS and Vista on the machine, I almost not use Mac OS. The reason for me of buying a MBP to run Windows is the backlighting keyboard which does not exist on any PC laptop.

I am a software developer, I run VS2008 on Vista on my MBP without problems. The only problem I have noticed is I feel the machine running hot for Windows even when there is no CPU intensive program is running.

You may need to remap some keys for Windows. For example, I remapped:
[Control]>[Left Windows]
[Left Command]>[Left Control]
[Right Command]>[Right Control]

 

Hahaha *high-five* ; another MBP owner who uses Vista 99% of the time. We're probably gonna get flamed in a few more hours.

Anyway, I'm taking up an IT course in my school (mainly programming) and I run VS2005 Professional under Vista in Boot Camp. No issues either.

 

yes forgot to add that bootcamp's neccessary. alright i take it so far that mbps can handle windows programming via bootcamp, vm etc. ty for replys

 

nothin wrong with using windows 99% of the time. Youve got what you need, and a sexy laptop, AT THE SAME TIME

i run xp a lot. MBP runs just the same as any brown box dell.

 

I'm use Windows for Visual C++ coding & OS X for JAVA/C/C++(Netbeans IDE)

NetBeans IDE

 

m15x,m17x, m1730 has a back lit keyboard....

 

Thank you for the information. I'll check it out.

 

Except that they're way too huge, heavy and powerful for the average user's needs.

 

I use Windows XP exclusively. I can say that there are many problems with drivers - sound problems, wireless, crashes once in a while, some inconsistent behaviours, problem with Hibernate/sleep mode. I can live with that, but I don't know anybody, who I would recomend that.

 

Yea...

I'm kinda wondering whether I'd put up with the same pain again when my MBP becomes obsolete and I have to buy a new one. It is after all one of the sexiest, slimmest, most powerful 15.4" notebook (excluding the m15x) at this point in time. I take pride in how my notebook is at least 30% slimmer than the rest of my schoolmate's notebooks.

 

I develop with VS using Windows Vista (Boot Camped). It runs flawlessly on my MBP. I also use the Mac OSX version of MonoDevelop, which allows you to develop .NET applications in the Mac OSX environment. Give it a whirl at www.monodevelop.com. It's very good, but a tiny bit more slower than the original VS on Windows.

 

haha i got my flame suit on

good responses guys, im looking forward to coding on the mbp via visual studio, and i'll give Mono on the mac a try.

about the m15x, that's 1.3 inches high right?

 

Postman, if you do decide to do development on a Mac machine of any kind, be advised that there's some gotchya's when using MonoDevelop to do the development. Read up on the various websites covering the Mono framework, it'll save you lots of headaches.

But, you can certainly install Windows (using Boot Camp) and develop with Visual Studio. Feel free to message me if you have questions on any of this.

 

Weird, I run XP without any issues whatsoever... both in BootCamps as well as Parallels.
I use XP basically for Netflix and gaming, every thing else is done on OS X, which I do prefer a lot more!

 

If you run Windows over 95% of the time, you'd probably start noticing more issues. Like I said in some other thread, it's usually just a handful of minor problems but are pretty hard to resolve.

Eg. My wireless keeps dropping only from my school's 802.1x secured network, and only under Windows XP. Connects fine to my home's WPA network, the free unsecured wireless hotspots, and everything's fine under Leopard & Vista. Also my Bluetooth has problems receiving files from my phone under XP too. All other Bluetooth functions work, and everythig's fine too under Leopard & Vista.

 

alright dbam ty i believe my instructor will be using vs pro, otherwise i guess there's a good benefit to mbps being dual os bootable.

if i remember werent there issues with bootcamp and xp when bootcamp was beta? i believe back then xp almost didnt even function on a mbp, however maybe updates will come before 2009.

 

LOL, no reason to flame. You got what you wanted. You bought an expensive Vista machine plus you paid extra for a Windows license which you had to manually install which is not supported since Apple's not the OEM. Basically Microsoft and Apple made money off of you and since you are not using OS X you could have spent a lot less on hardware just to run a downgraded OS, but you chose to go the high priced way, everybody's happy.

 

I would say that if I would switch from Mac Os once in a while everything would seem Ok, but I use XP exclusively, never reboot. And the issues I have are very specific.
Wireless: when working with 300Mbs Wireless N network the connection is dropped once a day and I have to disable/enable wireless card. Then it continues to work correctly. This happens both on MB and MBP. It never happen with G network.
If I disable the wireless adapter the computer freezes after a few minutes.
Sound: sometimes after going out of sleep mode sound is not working. If I plug in headphones and then disconnect them it works again. May be there is a certain pattern when it happens, but I didn't figure it our yet. Usually I keep sound muted. This happens only on MBP. Never on MB.
Sleep/Hibernate: sometimes the computer doesn't enter sleep mode correctly. It looks that it entered sleep mode, but after a second I hear the sound of DVD spinning and it wakes up just by itself. I open the lead, close it again and it goes to sleep correctly. Happens only on MBP.
After Hibernate brightness is always 100%.
MBP 2008 Penryn can enter sleep mode at all after it was working for a few hours. It freezes.
If Bluetooth is enabled and Apple drivers are used after waking up from the sleep mode USBs do not work as well as any internal devices which are USB - iSight camera. Switching to Widcomm drivers or disabling Bluetooth solves the problem. Happens on MB and MBP.
Trackpad: on MBP 2008 pointer jumps to the right or left edge of the screen every few minutes.
I had some random crashes with MBP 2008

Although MBP has these problems I can work around all of them. MBP 2008 was returned back to the store, so I don’t know if I would be happy with it in the end.

 

For those of you running Visual Studio and Vista via Boot Camp, how big of a hard drive partition did you devote to Vista?

I am considering doing something similar with Visual Studio 2008, SqlServer 2005 Developer and Vista, but am not sure how big my Boot Camp partition should be.

cycloptic

 

I gave the Windows partition a size of 60 GB for all of those. It will leave you with about 25GB to work with (can't remember exactly, have to check when I get home). All of them run very well.

Vista alone takes about 15 GB, VS2008 is about 5 GB, and SQL Server takes about 1-2 GB, depending on features selected.

 

Thanks.

Wow, that's a pretty big chunk of hard drive space, but I guess that's how much it takes.

I tried this once before and found out the hard way that 30G was not enough, thanks to that ever increasing WinSxS folder in Vista. 30G was more than adequate for XP hosting those applications along with Office and a handful of utilities.

cycloptic

 

Hah, that's what you think! This is how much a similar speced notebook would cost in Singapore:

Asus F8Sn: US$1912
Dell XPS M1530: US$1819
Thinkpad T61p: US$3225 <-- LOL
Apple Macbook Pro: US$2038

Slightly more expensive than a F8SN & XPS M1530, but it's definitely worth it for superior build quality, lighter weight (2.45kg vs 2.6kg), slimness, and uber sexyness. <3 I also get a discount on insurance (US$80 vs S$353) too.

On top of that, I'm entitled to free and cheap software from my school since Apple's one of my school's authorized retailers whereas the other 3 arn't. What do I get?

Adobe Web Premium CS3 - US$65 (retail price is US$1599) <-- another LOL
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 - US$9.40 <-- and another LOL
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac - Free
Microsoft Windows XP Professional - Free
Microsoft Windows Vista Business - Free
Visual Studio Professional 2005 - Free
(and a lot more free MS stuff but I didn't order them)


Now, tell me again if it's the stupidly overpriced way.


PS: I dedicated 140GB out of 185GB to Windows Vista.