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janalgo88

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 10, 2010
5
0
Hello,

I have MacBook Pro, Early 2008 and I’m considering to run Windows (7 or XP) on it exclusively, no booting in OSX, just Windows. Nothing against OSX, I am just used to working with Windows and Apple makes great hardware.

Does anyone have any experiences with long term usage? Heating, fans, performance, hardware incompatibility, battery life, …? I have read numerous topics on this and everyone has different experiences, but I thought posting here where the Mac community is one of the biggest will give me best answer.

Thanks!
 
It will work, though I suggest that you keep a small OSX partition just in case you need to access the OS, say for applying firmware or such. In the past windows tend to make the laptop run a bit hotter and the battery last less then in OSX. I think win7 mitigates this to some degree but I don't think it eliminates those issues out right.
 
When I use windows 7 my battery is always de-charged in less than 2 hours, but that's probably because I'm only gaming on it ;-)
The charging process is won't be any different because this is regulated by a chip inside the MBP not by the OS(in case you didn't already knew that...)
I do have the impression, but it's just an impression, that when OS X just understands the hardware much better than windows 7, using windows (even normally) my MBP always seems a little hotter a bit noisier...
Besides, if I ware you (but I'm not I'm a die-hard Apple fan so...) I wouldn't reject OS X that fast. I'm using Apple computers for euhm I think 7 years now and in the beginning I still had a PC wich I really "needed" now the only machine running windows at home is occasionally my MBP. After a while you really get used using OS X and you will more and more see the advantages of it, and I think you'll feel the necessity of using a windows become less.(hmm that doesn't sounds like a good English sentence, sry for that one ;))
I think that your MBP will run 7 like any other "normal" laptop but you should consider using OS X

ps: looking at your post again and seeing that it's an 2008 MBP you probably already did :s (or you bought it second hand...)
 
Hello,

I have MacBook Pro, Early 2008 and I’m considering to run Windows (7 or XP) on it exclusively, no booting in OSX, just Windows. Nothing against OSX, I am just used to working with Windows and Apple makes great hardware.

Does anyone have any experiences with long term usage? Heating, fans, performance, hardware incompatibility, battery life, …? I have read numerous topics on this and everyone has different experiences, but I thought posting here where the Mac community is one of the biggest will give me best answer.

Thanks!

I'm going to do the same thing on my Macbook. As maflynn pointed out though, it's a good idea to be able to boot to OSX in case of firmware and/or software updates (might as keep the software updated in case you want to go back to OSX or sell the machine in the future). My solution to that is to load SL on a small external drive and boot to that periodically to check for updates.
 
My solution to that is to load SL on a small external drive and boot to that periodically to check for updates.
That's a fine solution. You can set that all up and make sure it's working fine before you remove OS X from the internal.

As others have pointed out the main problems with Windows on Mac is that battery life is degraded significantly, especially on the 9600 models, and the machine gets really warm. Uncomfortable for lap use.

B
 
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