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Windows 7 on MBP i7 13" & Battery Life

P

pazz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 21, 2010
138
1
London, England
Like probably many others I'm a bit apprehensive of switching over to Mac OS. The hardware seems to make perfect sense so I just need to satisfy my fears regarding the software.

1) Is a Macbook Pro Core i7 13" capable of running just about anything (albeit GPU intensive apps) you can throw at it within a virtualised Windows 7 session? If so what apps will it potentially struggle with?

2) What kind of battery life can I expect to obtain doing basic tasks on the above MBP (with SSD) in a virtualised Windows 7 session?

3) Would boot camp on the above system improve battery life and performance?

4) I presume within boot camp I am still able to access the Mac OS partition? (for example if I have documents present on Mac OS partition I would like to open using Windows 7)

Thank you your wisdom is very much appreciated!
 
1. Pretty much anything. Any intensive program will bog down, though (on any computer).

2. Worse than what you'd get not running the VM, but not as bad as if you were in BootCamp.

3. See above.

4. You'd need a Windows utility that would allow it to read HFS+.
 
Quad5Ny said:
AnandTech - The MacBook Pro Review (13 & 15-inch): 2011 Brings Sandy Bridge - Battery Life
Scroll down for Boot Camp battery life tests.

You can Read from the OS X partition on Windows provided you installed the Apple BootCamp Driver package (its on your Snow Leopard Disc). But if you want to be able to write to a HFS+ partition, then you'll need third party drivers.
Click to expand...

Great info! Thanks for this.

Quad5Ny said:
You might also enjoy this:
AnandTech - Apple MacBook Pro 13: Can a Mac Be a Decent Windows Laptop?
Click to expand...

I have read this article a while back but to be honest it didnt help eliminate the fears I have about whether OSX will be right for me.

For example, I have a bulk file renaming utility I run on MP3's which extracts ID3 tag data and rename's the file name with defined ID3 criteria. Helps clean up file names. I've just realised they dont do a Mac OS compatible version of the utility :mad:
 
FWIW, I've got a 2011 13" MBP (i7) and was bitterly dissappointed initially when I got it, as the battery performance was MUCH less than my 2010 C2D 13".

But, as of the past week, I booted into OSX, and installed the EFI update, since then, on a reasonable power plan in W7, im getting 1.5 ~ 3 Hours MORE....

I got 5.5 Hours out of my laptop last night, screen roughly 50% brightness and surfing the web.

Much better!
 
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