Anybody running Vista on Leopard Macbook Pro?

Hi everybody.

I'm in the market for a new laptop. I've always heard lots of good things from my designer friends and other fake turtle-neck wearing mac users about the Vista experience on their MacBooks. Many said its fantastic.

But I'd like to get some more data on this so I'd like to see what your experience has been with that setup and hear the good as well as the bad about how well it has worked for you.

Thanks.

Mark Brown wrote:

Hi everybody.

I'm in the market for a new laptop. I've always heard lots of good things from my designer friends and other fake turtle-neck wearing mac users about the Vista experience on their MacBooks. Many said its fantastic.

But I'd like to get some more data on this so I'd like to see what your experience has been with that setup and hear the good as well as the bad about how well it has worked for you.

Thanks.

Wait for PaoloM to get in; he runs Vista pretty much full time on his MBP.

Friend of mine does too. Very nice machine; he did start off with MacOSX, but now runs Vista because it runs all its stuff. He says games performance isn't brilliant, but survivable (Apple's graphics cards tend to run a generation or so behind the ones avaliable for Windows).

I'm told the reason that it is so good, is that MS and Apple have worked very hard on the drivers and stuff to make sure that it is a really comfortable user experience. And the lack of crapware (Symantec) and other crud that comes installed on Dell machines, is non existent when you install your own Vista on a Mac; should keep the installation a lot sleeker.

MS has also relaxed the licensing rules for installing Vista under virtualisation, so it should be much cheaper to get it up and running on your Mac (this was an excellent move on MS's part by the way).

Anyway, the friend of mine says he's looking at the Dell M1530, but the next-gen MBP is definitely in the running, even though he doesn't run MacOSX.

Ray6 wrote:

MS has also relaxed the licensing rules for installing Vista under virtualisation, so it should be much cheaper to get it up and running on your Mac (this was an excellent move on MS's part by the way).

Yes, I saw this. Definitely the right move for everyone running different platforms but still interested in virtualization.

Microsoft also aquired a company that specializes in providing 3D capabilities for VM and TS. Everything we thought we knew about graphics over RDP was wrong.

So expect full, hardware accelerated Direct3D graphics over terminal services and 3D accelerated virtualized video drivers to become mainstream in MS VM products and it's competitors.

I cannot wait until these technologies appear in *nix TS and VM solutions. It will literally change everything for users of alternative platforms.

Ray6 wrote:


MS has also relaxed the licensing rules for installing Vista under virtualisation, so it should be much cheaper to get it up and running on your Mac (this was an excellent move on MS's part by the way).

Thanks Ray.

I'm actually not too concerned with licensing rules for Vista using virtualization. I have an inside connection for a special deal on Vista -jk

Seriously I'm actually looking more towards running it natively on MBP and I hear that Boot Camp is now baked into Leopard.

But I'd be curious to hear the good/bad for both running natively as well as in a VM as well.

thanks again

Xaero_Vincent wrote:



Ray6 wrote: MS has also relaxed the licensing rules for installing Vista under virtualisation, so it should be much cheaper to get it up and running on your Mac (this was an excellent move on MS's part by the way).

Microsoft also aquired a company that specializes in providing 3D capabilities for VM and TS. Everything we thought we knew about graphics over RDP was wrong.

doesn't RDP already have 3d capabilities? I've been happily using RDP with remote aero working for a long while.

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop wrote:



Xaero_Vincent wrote:  Ray6 wrote: MS has also relaxed the licensing rules for installing Vista under virtualisation, so it should be much cheaper to get it up and running on your Mac (this was an excellent move on MS's part by the way). Microsoft also aquired a company that specializes in providing 3D capabilities for VM and TS. Everything we thought we knew about graphics over RDP was wrong.

doesn't RDP already have 3d capabilities? I've been happily using RDP with remote aero working for a long while.

I thought remote aero and remote compositing actually happened on the client side rather than being something transmitted from the terminal server.  Might be wrong, though.

I use my MacBook for work running Vista Business natively under bootcamp and its as if Vista was designed to run on this hardware, it works flawlessly.

Also I purchased Parallels 3.0 which allows me to run the same bootcamp Vista partition inside OS X, which means I can use Office 2007 Visual Studio etc inside OS X, which is pretty cool.

Don't bother with any other laptop seriously get a MacBook and you won't be dissapointed.

I have the 13.3" MacBook which is light, very very well built compared to equivalent Sony's etc, and look nice too.

Ray6 wrote:

MS has also relaxed the licensing rules for installing Vista under virtualisation, so it should be much cheaper to get it up and running on your Mac (this was an excellent move on MS's part by the way).

I am so happy about this!  I'm looking forward to playing with VMWare Fusion this weekend.

Vista runs great natively on my Mac Mini.  I don't play games so I'm not too concerned about 3D performance and such, but all the applications I normally run (IE, Visual Studio, etc) work well, even with just 1 GB RAM, and I haven't had any problems whatsoever with Apple's Windows drivers.

What appeals to me as a Web developer about virtualization is being able to test my Web pages on Mac and Windows without rebooting and (b) being able to test multiple versions of browsers (IE 6, Safari 2, Safari 3 on Mac and Windows, Firefox on Linux, etc).

leeappdalecom wrote:

I use my MacBook for work running Vista Business natively under bootcamp and its as if Vista was designed to run on this hardware, it works flawlessly.

Also I purchased Parallels 3.0 which allows me to run the same bootcamp Vista partition inside OS X, which means I can use Office 2007 Visual Studio etc inside OS X, which is pretty cool.

Don't bother with any other laptop seriously get a MacBook and you won't be dissapointed.

I have the 13.3" MacBook which is light, very very well built compared to equivalent Sony's etc, and look nice too.

Wow, I was wondering if I would be able to run the same Vista bits both natively as well as in a VM. That's pretty cool.

JChung2006 wrote:



What appeals to me as a Web developer about virtualization is being able to test my Web pages on Mac and Windows without rebooting and (b) being able to test multiple versions of browsers (IE 6, Safari 2, Safari 3 on Mac and Windows, Firefox on Linux, etc).

AWESOME. This is exactly why I was considering MBP in the first place. I'm moving into a new job and would like to have this capability.

Well, not linux so much

Mark Brown wrote:

Hi everybody.

I'm in the market for a new laptop. I've always heard lots of good things from my designer friends and other fake turtle-neck wearing mac users about the Vista experience on their MacBooks. Many said its fantastic.

But I'd like to get some more data on this so I'd like to see what your experience has been with that setup and hear the good as well as the bad about how well it has worked for you.

Thanks.

Macbook Pro runs Vista great (I am typing this message on one in Vista).  It is my primary development machine with VS2008 and I wouldn't choose any other laptop.

Although, unless if you want it now it is rumored that soon the Macbook Pro's will receive a Penryn upgrade along with multi-touch touchpads.

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/01/21/next-macbooks-macbook-pros-to-receive-multi-touch-trackpad/

nightski wrote:


http://www.macrumors.com/2008/01/21/next-macbooks-macbook-pros-to-receive-multi-touch-trackpad/

Sun also rumoured to rise tomorrow...

Sadly, my Mac is Leopard only

There are a couple people in my team that use MacBooks with Vista and they are happy. I thought that it was the best platform to run Vista until I got my XPS m1330.

Now I can say that Dell has done a bang up job with this toy; if we skip over some sillyness during setup, this is an awesome Vista machine

PaoloM wrote:

Sadly, my Mac is Leopard only

Do you have to declare a conflict of interest, given how you're working on Windows, but secretly going home to a Mac?

blowdart wrote:



PaoloM wrote: I thought that it was the best platform to run Vista until I got my XPS m1330.

Tiny low-res screen though from what I can see

Same size and resolution as the MacBook.

evildictaitor wrote:



PaoloM wrote: Sadly, my Mac is Leopard only

Do you have to declare a conflict of interest, given how you're working on Windows, but secretly going home to a Mac?

I don't allow Mac in my home, this is a work machine