How does Windows run on a Macbook Pro?

heelix

[H]ard|Gawd
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I know... get the rope.

I'm looking for a 16:10 form factor laptop for work. One of my options is a Mac - but here is the rub - I really need to run Windows for most of the software I'm going to use. I know there are VM options, but I'm not interested in OSX as the host OS. Just looking at the hardware.

How solid are the Windows 7 and/or Linux drivers for the Macbook hardware? This even a reasonable idea, or would I spend all my time running the main tools in a VM?
 
A lot of people run only windows on macbooks for the very same reason you are wanting too. I can say win7 runs really well on parallels with only one core so I would assume it would run fine as the host os too.
 
Windows is ok on a Macbook. The main loss is the touchpad. It still works well, but it's not nearly as good as it is in Mac OS, due to the drivers. It behaves more like your run-of-the-mill touchpad from Lenovo or Dell. Battery life is also better in Mac OS. Also, you will want to make sure you leave Mac OS on there for doing EFI and firmware updates.

I no longer run Boot Camp (native Windows install) on mine, since VMWare Fusion is so good. I use a number of Windows tools in Unity mode, and then native Mac version for cross-platform tools. (browser, text editor, terminal, etc.) The best benefit of this (in my opinion) is that you get all the benefits of using the touchpad in Mac OS along with the ability to run Windows software.

I would not personally try running Linux in Boot Camp again. There's much better driver support for running it in a VM, and the battery life is very poor on a native install.
 
Basically, I have two complaints.

1) Drivers are terrible, so the computer gets laughably, hilariously hot, the fans NEVER spin up even when it's literally hot enough to boil water inside, and battery life is garbage (about half that of the Mac side, running between 2.5-3 hours on my '09 MBP) because Apple never bothered to implement all the powersaving stuff other computers do. (However, they've massively improved since 2.1).

2) The keyboard combos to replace things like PG-DN are really wonky. If you end up using keys other than the letters/numbers much, don't bother.

Other than that, it's not bad.
 
1) Drivers are terrible, so the computer gets laughably, hilariously hot, the fans NEVER spin up even when it's literally hot enough to boil water inside

My old 1st-gen Macbook Pro had the opposite problem in Windows, the fans would always run at full speed (6000 RPM) and it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. As you said though, they've gotten quite a bit better over time, but it's still obvious that Apple's not very good at making Windows drivers.
 
Basically, I have two complaints.

1) Drivers are terrible, so the computer gets laughably, hilariously hot
2) The keyboard combos to replace things like PG-DN are really wonky. If you end up using keys other than the letters/numbers much, don't bother.
I will counter the "gets hot" thing. I have 2009 MBP 17" (C2D 2.6ghz) and in Win7 it runs no warmer than OS X does. I've left Win7 running all day with no ill effect. Mine is always on AC but I have no doubt the battery life is less since Win7's power management is designed to hit against so much hardware, where OS X has a limited range of hardware to care about. In contrast, the "Hackintosh" crowd shoe-horning OS X onto standard PC hardware tend to get terrible battery life from OS X.

The keyboard can certainly be a problem with the lack of keys.
 
I will counter the "gets hot" thing. I have 2009 MBP 17" (C2D 2.6ghz) and in Win7 it runs no warmer than OS X does. I've left Win7 running all day with no ill effect. Mine is always on AC but I have no doubt the battery life is less since Win7's power management is designed to hit against so much hardware, where OS X has a limited range of hardware to care about. In contrast, the "Hackintosh" crowd shoe-horning OS X onto standard PC hardware tend to get terrible battery life from OS X.

The keyboard can certainly be a problem with the lack of keys.

Part of it was that I really liked to play games from the Total War series. Some of those games (especially the mods that replaced the cool, but graphically reasonable skins with "HAHA, let's choke CFX 6970's" skins, or changed the default unit sizes to ridiculous levels, and then spammed stacks so that the average battle was 1500 of your guys vs. 15000 of theirs(average on default was about 800 to a side)) got really, really hot, and would run about 1 FPS on low settings. Everyday use isn't terrible as long as I'm not pushing the processor and GPU at the same time.
 
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The big problem with MBP and Windows is mainly confined to the 15" or larger models with the discrete GPU. Most manufacturers who give a shit will write drivers that turn off the dGPU and fall back on the integrated graphics when not doing anything graphically intensive. Or at least give you the option to manually toggle between integrated and discrete. Apple does neither. When you're in Windows, your discrete GPU is on fully all the time, and there is no workaround. This will burn through your battery pretty quickly.

The 13" MBP with integrated graphics doesn't suffer from this issue, but the touchpad software still sucks. It feels like Apple does the bare minimum to get things running under Windows.

I had a 2011 15" that I used for some gaming in Windows. I had some issues doing that--it seemed like the computer was just not designed for gaming. The CPU kept running hot and throttling itself down significantly. I installed a program called ThrottleStop that prevented this behavior and it was fine after that (temperatures were still within spec). The 6750M graphics actually had enough muscle to play some of the latest games at reasonable quality settings, but the system was very loud doing it.

Overall, I'd really recommend against getting a mac if you want to use Windows primarily. You could get a workstation-level PC laptop for still less money and have a seamless experience.
 
Appreciate the feedback - figured we would have a few folks who tried this sort of thing.
 
My 2010 MBP runs win7 like a champ nottaproblemo, better in fact than my sister's brand new HP lappy does natively, :)
 
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