Windows 7 battery life on MacBook Pro

[greenlogo1976]

Hi,

I am a software developer and I must use Windows 7 for what I do at work.

I bought an iMac 21in for home use in February and I love it. Now my windows laptop is due for replacement and I'm thinking about replacing it with a MacBook Pro, and running Windows 7 on it for work, and OSX for everything else.

I have a couple of questions that you might help me with:

• What is the battery life like running windows?
• Are there any performance benefits/drawbacks to running windows on a MacBook Pro? Should I just buy a PC Laptop? (If there is no performance advantage then a PC would be much cheaper)
• I'm going to buy the 13in for portability, but attach a monitor in the office. Any feedback/hints/advice/lessons learned?
• I had a look at the buying guide, and although it says "Mid cycle" it looks like a new update could come in the next month or so (judging by the day count). Should I wait?

I'm flying to London in the morning and I think that Dixons travel would have a good price, so I'm looking to make up my mind in the next couple of hours!

Thanks in advance,

T

 

[Eddyisgreat]

[*]What is the battery life like running windows?

It's ok. It'll be longer in OS X.

[*]Are there any performance benefits/drawbacks to running windows on a MacBook Pro? Should I just buy a PC Laptop? (If there is no performance advantage then a PC would be much cheaper)

No benefits or drawbacks. Why would there be benefits? Running Windows on a mac (in bootcamp) is like running windows on a dell or hp. I will say that obviously, you don't get all the bloatware from a bare Windows installation that you do on an install from the vendors mentioned above. This will certainly make it seem faster (but not a direct comparison).

[*]I'm going to buy the 13in for portability, but attach a monitor in the office. Any feedback/hints/advice/lessons learned?

uh...get a good monitor and..uh...unless your display has mini displayport, plan on buying an adapter.

[*]I had a look at the buying guide, and although it says "Mid cycle" it looks like a new update could come in the next month or so (judging by the day count). Should I wait?

lol. We have a.b.s.o.l.u.t.e.l.y no idea when the next MBP is being released.

 

[chrmjenkins]

There's not going to be any substantive update to the MBP until February of next year at the earliest. There's no new hardware to update it to.

 

[parapup]

Sounds like you would be better off using a regular PC laptop if you are going to run Windows on it exclusively. Beware of the Display Port - DVI adapters are available but search a bit and you will find there are a fair amount of compatibility issues with 3rd party DVI monitors.

Battery life is going to be lower than OSX but reasonable 3-3.5 hrs.

Also keep in mind you are buying an older Core2 CPU with the 13". So I would think you would get better performance and price for a PC laptop with Core I3/I5 processors.

 

[greenlogo1976]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

 

[greenlogo1976]

Oh, and I'll be buying one.

 

[vistadude]

The trackpad sucks in windows and the keyboard is hard to type on, basically, egonomics is no good for windows, so a pc laptop is much better for you.

 

[Tarek]

I agree with vistadude. The trackpad doesn't function well on Windows, or at least not as good as it does on Mac OSX, and it gets irritating to use it sometimes. That's why I prefer using a mouse when working on Windows, and the Apple Magic Mouse does the trick for me on both Mac and Windows. However, I have never noticed a problem with the keyboard so maybe something is wrong with vistadude's keyboard?

At the OP, using Windows on a MacBook Pro through Boot Camp is just like using Windows on any windows-based computer. So since you already have an iMac, it's better buy a Dell or an Alienware that will fulfill your work needs and save you some good bucks.

 

[Dr McKay]

Battery life will be pretty good, as Windows 7 is built for good battery life, plus the Macbook has a very good battery.

It should run Windows 7 very well, as Apple are amongst the groups that build quality machines.

 

[MrD1sturbed]

Of course your other option is virtualization software like VMware or Parallels. Unless i'm gaming that's the route I take for Windows usage. Battery life is still a little better than it is with Windows in Bootcamp so it's a win on that part. Parallels 6 is supposed to give a 40% boost in performance too and it was just released yesterday.

 

[ryannazaretian]

I'm in college as a Computer Engineering major. As such, I program quite a bit.

In my robotics class, we're using a program called Python(x,y). We're doing 3D animations that require us to push the left and right button of the pointing device.

Unfortunately, there's no way to do this.

Expect to have to carry around a mouse. Why Apple can't add two buttons on their computers is beyond me. Form over function.