MBPr 15" windows - what version plays best?

[Technodynamic]

I was a very early adopter of the MAcBook Pro retina 15". I got in in the summer of 2012. Love it.

There are times when I would like to run windows, to do SharePoint tasks and other rare Windows only things.

I tried about a year ago to put Windows 8 on, but I always had some issues. Couldnt get brightness to work, no sound, networking worked 20% of the time, etc. Eventually I gave up and did nothing.

Here I am, a year later. Does a fresh Windows 8 install work better now? Should I just put Windows 7 on? How much space do you all allocated for the partition?

 

[takeshi74]

How much space do you all allocated for the partition?

You should really base the decision on your needs versus random polling.

 

[HIMAN1998]

I would say try 8 again. Windows 8 is faster than 7, but it is all personal preference. It also depends on your storage. If you have a lot of storage and would be using Windows and OS X about half and half, split the HDD/SSD into two equal partitions.

 

[HolidaySeason]

I was a very early adopter of the MAcBook Pro retina 15". I got in in the summer of 2012. Love it.

There are times when I would like to run windows, to do SharePoint tasks and other rare Windows only things.

I tried about a year ago to put Windows 8 on, but I always had some issues. Couldnt get brightness to work, no sound, networking worked 20% of the time, etc. Eventually I gave up and did nothing.

Here I am, a year later. Does a fresh Windows 8 install work better now? Should I just put Windows 7 on? How much space do you all allocated for the partition?

I use bootcamp for Windows 8 Pro on my Haswell MBA and have no issues. Just make sure you get the drivers picked from BootCamp Assistant (it'll download them while still in OSX). I had a hard time at first but got it all figured out.

As for the WiFi I got it to install correctly (after doing the above).
At first I was reading posts online and downloading the BootCamp packs for Windows manually. LET BCA (BootCamp Assistant) do it all for you!

Back to the Wifi. After I got the drivers installed it couldn't see any wifi APs. The fix was to shut down between booting OS's instead of rebooting. Something about volatile memory holding on to the adapter and not fully releasing it for the other OS. SHUT DOWN first then start into the next OS. Only makes OS swap time like 2-3 seconds.

HOWEVER, I will say why don't you just use Parallels or VMWare Fusion? Just virtualize everything. If you are gaming then bootcamp. It's REALLY nice having a sandboxed work environment with Parallels/VMware. I work in enterprise and having the occasional lockup is pretty annoying. Also lack of TPM chip was a deal breaker for me using my MBA for work in an all Microsoft house (hint I'm in Redmond).

Allocation depends on what you need to do. You could get away with 80GB easily. I have a 256GB SSD in the MBA so I split it 128/128 when I was boot camping. Now I don't even bother with bootcamp and just use my work laptop (Lenovo t420) for work and MBA at home.


Good luck!

 

[Technodynamic]

I use bootcamp for Windows 8 Pro on my Haswell MBA and have no issues. Just make sure you get the drivers picked from BootCamp Assistant (it'll download them while still in OSX). I had a hard time at first but got it all figured out.

As for the WiFi I got it to install correctly (after doing the above).
At first I was reading posts online and downloading the BootCamp packs for Windows manually. LET BCA (BootCamp Assistant) do it all for you!

Back to the Wifi. After I got the drivers installed it couldn't see any wifi APs. The fix was to shut down between booting OS's instead of rebooting. Something about volatile memory holding on to the adapter and not fully releasing it for the other OS. SHUT DOWN first then start into the next OS. Only makes OS swap time like 2-3 seconds.

HOWEVER, I will say why don't you just use Parallels or VMWare Fusion? Just virtualize everything. If you are gaming then bootcamp. It's REALLY nice having a sandboxed work environment with Parallels/VMware. I work in enterprise and having the occasional lockup is pretty annoying. Also lack of TPM chip was a deal breaker for me using my MBA for work in an all Microsoft house (hint I'm in Redmond).

Allocation depends on what you need to do. You could get away with 80GB easily. I have a 256GB SSD in the MBA so I split it 128/128 when I was boot camping. Now I don't even bother with bootcamp and just use my work laptop (Lenovo t420) for work and MBA at home.


Good luck!

very helpful. thank you.