MBP Purchase/Dual Boot Question

[bakasam]

So I've been wanting to buy a Macbook Pro for some time now. I've been looking at the 13" model.

I've always been a PC guy (PC gaming on my desktop ). But at the same time there are certain programs I commonly use that are Windows exclusive so having access to them would be great. I've heard you can use it to dualboot windows/linux on it.

1. How is the battery time on a MBP when your running Windows 7? (preferably 64 bit but 32 would be fine as well)

I'm also not too picky about having the top of the line hardware but Core 2 Duo is getting dated

2. Would it be recommended to wait for the 13" MBP to get a hardware upgrade to say like an i5 or i3 processor?

 

[melterx12]

1: battery life on windows is about the same as it is running Mac OS X

2: Its up to you whether you want to wait for the next revision of MBP 13" or not, but I find the current hardware in the 2010 MBP 13" to be more than enough for general use and some gaming.

 

[Turian.Spectre]

So I've been wanting to buy a Macbook Pro for some time now. I've been looking at the 13" model.

I've always been a PC guy (PC gaming on my desktop ). But at the same time there are certain programs I commonly use that are Windows exclusive so having access to them would be great. I've heard you can use it to dualboot windows/linux on it.

1. How is the battery time on a MBP when your running Windows 7? (preferably 64 bit but 32 would be fine as well)

I'm also not too picky about having the top of the line hardware but Core 2 Duo is getting dated

2. Would it be recommended to wait for the 13" MBP to get a hardware upgrade to say like an i5 or i3 processor?

i have tried Windows & 64 bit on my 15" MBP 5,3 model. It SUCKS. I started getting affraid that it is demolishing my battery so I switched back to Windows XP. I really really wish there were drivers for windows xp 64 bit. I would love to use all my 8gb of ram. Alas, not so...
I will stick with xp 32 bit. it works. All of this is mostly based on my opinion of course.

 

[bakasam]

i have tried Windows & 64 bit on my 15" MBP 5,3 model. It SUCKS. I started getting affraid that it is demolishing my battery so I switched back to Windows XP. I really really wish there were drivers for windows xp 64 bit. I would love to use all my 8gb of ram. Alas, not so...
I will stick with xp 32 bit. it works. All of this is mostly based on my opinion of course.

Think you can elaborate on why it sucks? and have you tried Win7 32 bit?

 

[Turian.Spectre]

Think you can elaborate on why it sucks? and have you tried Win7 32 bit?

I have not with 32 bit. I did not like it b/c it was consuming a lot of resources even though I set everything to the lowest possible settings to get the best performance. My battery was draining at least 20-30% faster compared to win xp. Plus I also own a sony vaio that came with windows 7. Its almost a year old but with a battery health that is very low. It could stay on (idle) for at least 5-6 hours when I got it. Now it can barely manage 1.5 hours. So after trying win7 on my mac, and noticing a significant change in battery consumption, I decided not to risk it on this machine, and made my bootcamp partition win xp instead.
hope this answers your question.

 

[bakasam]

Ahh. Good thing I still have my XP keys then

 

[Turian.Spectre]

Ahh. Good thing I still have my XP keys then

Yup. I have my XP disk in a cd album for like 4-5 years now. And I'm not planning on getting rid of it. Although after switching to Mac, I find myself using windows less and less and less. At first I was loking for ways to make it work good on a mac, now I usually search for Mac alternatives to what I need to do in windows. ONLY reason I still have windows installed, is some gaming. Surprisingly, finding "windows only" games that work on a mac is not that hard. And its cool that there are so many that have been altered that way through Cider.

 

[mac8867]

I really really wish there were drivers for windows xp 64 bit. I would love to use all my 8gb of ram. Alas, not so...

I run 64 bit Windows XP Pro in a VMWare Fusion virtual machine, honestly, the performance is spectacular. I haven't had any issues whatsoever.

To be complete, I run VMWare Fusion 3.1.1 on Snow Leopard 10.6.4. The VM is Windows XP Pro 64 bit, installed with SP1, then updated to SP2.

 

[George Knighton]

i have tried Windows & 64 bit on my 15" MBP 5,3 model. It SUCKS. I started getting affraid that it is demolishing my battery so I switched back to Windows XP. I really really wish there were drivers for windows xp 64 bit. I would love to use all my 8gb of ram. Alas, not so...
I will stick with xp 32 bit. it works. All of this is mostly based on my opinion of course.

On a 15", you probably have nVidia discrete video.

When running Windows by itself, or running it inside a virtual machine inside the OSX, you are going to force the nVidia discrete high performance video.

This is what destroys the battery life, I think.

You're going to have this problem no matter which Windows version you pick, probably.

 

[George Knighton]

I run 64 bit Windows XP Pro in a VMWare Fusion virtual machine, honestly, the performance is spectacular. I haven't had any issues whatsoever.

To be complete, I run VMWare Fusion 3.1.1 on Snow Leopard 10.6.4. The VM is Windows XP Pro 64 bit, installed with SP1, then updated to SP2.

But you've only got one graphics chip, right?

It's the people with two graphics chip and automatic switching that have horrible battery life on Windows.

I think. I admit I'm just starting out with this stuff, but that's how it seems to me.

 

[Turian.Spectre]

I run 64 bit Windows XP Pro in a VMWare Fusion virtual machine, honestly, the performance is spectacular. I haven't had any issues whatsoever.

To be complete, I run VMWare Fusion 3.1.1 on Snow Leopard 10.6.4. The VM is Windows XP Pro 64 bit, installed with SP1, then updated to SP2.

I don't want to run it in VM or Parallels. I have tried that and it works. But I would rather run it on its own. There are no drivers for my machine and windows xp.

 

[lickitysplit]

I have also noticed that my 15 i7 Windows 7 64 partition is much worse on battery. But it doesn't bother me because the only time i use that partition is to play games so I have it plugged in anyways.

 

[bakasam]

Sorry I am new to this but from what I've read and searched up VMWare is a virtualization program that allows you to run multiple OS' within a single machine.

However, when running Windows or any OS for that matter WITHIN a mac wouldn't that limited the performance as you are running both the Windows and Mac OS. Also how would that be better/different than running Windows standalone?

 

[lickitysplit]

Sorry I am new to this but from what I've read and searched up VMWare is a virtualization program that allows you to run multiple OS' within a single machine.

However, when running Windows or any OS for that matter WITHIN a mac wouldn't that limited the performance as you are running both the Windows and Mac OS. Also how would that be better/different than running Windows standalone?

If you going to be doing things like gaming it is not recommended to use the Virtual Machine. It is better to dual boot since its running the actual OS and not OSX with a windows VM inside it. It really just depends on what you will be doing on the machine.

 

[Turian.Spectre]

Sorry I am new to this but from what I've read and searched up VMWare is a virtualization program that allows you to run multiple OS' within a single machine.

However, when running Windows or any OS for that matter WITHIN a mac wouldn't that limited the performance as you are running both the Windows and Mac OS. Also how would that be better/different than running Windows standalone?

Its good if you have some windows only programs you need to run really quick and switch back to what you were doing on your mac. I would definitely NOT suggest playing games in it. You will be using a lot of Ram and will limit your performance.