2010 Macbook Pro 13 & Windows 7

[rabmag]

Hi all,

I'm looking into getting a MBP 13 with the primary uses of school, photo editing, and multitrack recording.

I love the form factor & battery life but am a Windows 7 user. I have to admit...Windows 7 is the best Windows I've ever used and I'm quite happy with it. I've always heard about how much better suited the Mac OS is for photo editing and music recording, though.

My question basically is:

1. How decently will the MBP 13 2.4ghz with 4GB run Windows 7? Is there anything I should know about if I wanted to run it, say, 80% of the time? How much more battery would it devour and are there any kind of kinks or problems I might run into by using Windows 7 the majority of the time?

2. How much more battery life would I gain by upgrading to a SSD? What is the best SSD for the MBP, not in terms of speed, but in terms of reliability and longevity?

I'd like to think that I'll become more familiar with Mac OS and will eventually balance the use of both operating systems and figure out which one suits which task better.

Oh, and is the MBP 13 2.4ghz capable of light editing of HD video files? It'd be kinda cool to do basic editing on my iPhone 4 video files as well as the Hauppauge HD PVR recordings.

Thank you

 

[miles01110]

1. How decently will the MBP 13 2.4ghz with 4GB run Windows 7? Is there anything I should know about if I wanted to run it, say, 80% of the time? How much more battery would it devour and are there any kind of kinks or problems I might run into by using Windows 7 the majority of the time?

You'll get a couple hours, but nowhere close to the advertised 10. Windows still doesn't have the optimization in this area on Mac hardware.

2. How much more battery life would I gain by upgrading to a SSD? What is the best SSD for the MBP, not in terms of speed, but in terms of reliability and longevity?

Some, but not much. If you're going to run both operating systems, an SSD means you're going to be paying a ton of money for two small partitions.

 

[maflynn]

You'll get a couple hours, but nowhere close to the advertised 10. Windows still doesn't have the optimization in this area on Mac hardware.

Agreed, windows on a MBP is anything but a resource hog. OSX does a nice job at managing the battery, but given that apple's focus is not windows, they have not developed any drivers to help windows and of course MS isn't going to to do anything either (for the MBP)

 

[rabmag]

Thank you both for answering!

What kind of numbers are we talking here? I was looking into the Envy 14 and saw that people were getting around 4-5hrs with normal use.

Would Windows 7 on a MBP 13 be considerably less than 4-5hrs?

Even so, I'm very tempted to get the MBP just for the benefits I've heard of in terms of photo, video, and music production.

btw, how would the MPB 13 do with light editing of HD video from sources such as an iPhone 4 or an M2TS file from a Hauppauge HD PVR? By light, I mean simple transitions, overlays, and trimming.

Thank you so much again