Apple's MacBook Pro: Using it as a Mac and a PC
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 13, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
I had to enter my CD key and deal with activation just like you would on a PC, and then I was placed at the Windows desktop. The next step was to toss in the driver CD created earlier, and Windows' autorun feature will start a driver installation wizard for the MacBook Pro.
While there's an occasional Continue or Next button to click, the process is mostly automated as it installs the MacBook Pro's chipset, video, audio, network and input drivers. Thanks to having complete control over the hardware configuration Apple has made the process of installing Windows on your Mac easier than it is installing it on your PC. With all of the drivers installed, there's one last reboot and the process is complete. I'd just installed Windows XP on my MacBook Pro and now it's time to use it.
After installing Windows XP, by default the MacBook Pro boots to the Windows partition . This behavior can be changed in the Startup Disk utility: Control Panel > Performance > Startup Disk and select the default boot partition. If you happen to have a bootable CD/DVD in the drive you can even choose to boot from that.
While the control panel option will permanently change the system's default behavior, if you want to temporarily boot to a different partition simply hold down the option key while the MacBook Pro starts up to access the boot menu.
It takes no more than a few minutes using Windows XP on the MacBook Pro before you realize that a number of things feel out of place. The biggest problem is that there's no right mouse button, which in OS X you get around by holding down the ctrl key and clicking, but in Windows XP ctrl + click does nothing. There is a utility out there that will make holding the ctrl key down swap your left and right mouse buttons temporarily, effectively making ctrl + click function as a right click under Windows. The utility works as advertised; you just need to make sure it loads at startup to always have support for a right mouse button. The other option to right click is to hit Shift + F10, but obviously it's not the most natural feeling.
Apple's driver CD installs a driver to enable support for the eject key on the MacBook Pro keyboard, which is very helpful because without it or any support for a right click, getting a CD/DVD to eject is far more trouble than it should be. The fn key is also not supported under Windows XP, which means that not only do you lose support support for the function hotkeys but you also lose any support for page up, page down, home and end keys.
Although Apple clearly states that the integrated iSight camera is not supported under Windows XP, a camera icon does show up in My Computer. However, I made the mistake of doubling clicking it which gave me my first blue screen on a Mac. Needless to say, I didn't make that mistake again.
My only other complaint about using Windows XP under Boot Camp on the MacBook Pro is that I could never get the mouse sensitivity to be at a level I was perfectly comfortable with. The default setting was far too slow (just like under OS X), but cranking it up to where I would like it made the pointer behave a little too erratically when trying to perform more minute movements. The trackpad was obviously fine under OS X, so it sounds like it's just a driver thing under Windows XP.
In terms of usability, Windows XP under Boot Camp is pretty much like Windows XP on any other notebook other than the aforementioned keyboard/trackpad limitations; I've got no complaints there. And yes, you can even run games on your notebook, but keep in mind that the MacBook Pro's Mobility Radeon X1600 isn't going to be able to run the latest games at their highest detail settings.
Honestly, it would seem that fixing the issues I had with Boot Camp would be fairly simple for Apple to do with a more extensive keyboard driver. Much like Apple did with their eject button driver, doing the same for the other keys that currently don't work would fix a lot of the problems. It could be that Apple either released the Boot Camp beta earlier than it expected to, or that Apple wants to make the Windows XP experience as poor as possible on the MacBook Pro.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
52 Comments
View All Comments
nels0360 - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
The hardware issue mentioned have been or are being fixed.Apple has release silent revisions of the MacBook Pro. It is well documented on other sites such as Macrumors.com
In fact, I believe Apple will give you a new revision if you complain about one of these problems.
plinden - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I know they are different benchmarks, but over at http://www.macworld.com/2006/04/firstlooks/xpbench...">MacWorld, they found that the MacBook Pro was faster at running Windows than three Windows-only PCs.I'm not going to editorialize here, just bringing this to your attention.
ss284 - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
Which pretty much drops macworld's benchmark credibility to zero. Actually, their credibility was already really low so its no big deal.ss284 - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
Unless the benchmark was how fast it could burn a hole in your pants and sterilize your important parts.jbb132 - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Sadly, even the most recent MacBook Pro's continue to suffer from the hardware problems you noticed. I've now had two units with the "whine," particularly when the laptop is running on battery power. The only way to stop it is to turn photobooth on and leave it on. Various hacks (magicnoisekiller in particular) help but really...Pirks - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Hey Anand!Thanks for an interesting review! Now, what was the video source codec and resolution in your H.264 encoding test? I've got a Mac zealot here saying he's got only 2 frames per second in similar H.264 encoding task. He also has Mac OS X 10.4.6 and Quicktime Pro 7.0.4. I wonder is you used source with resolution like 160 by 120 for that test??
To other readers: take with a grain of salt Anand's view on running multiple apps simultaneously in XP. He says something like "uh oh we can't run multiple apps all the time on win coz win can't manage its RAM blah blah", but in fact if you disable XP swap AND if you stick 2 or 3 gigs or RAM in your mobo you'll get my experience of running dozens of apps open at the same time and even some games while at it (DOOM 3 + Matlab + Maya 7 + other little apps like VDub open at the same time is a no brainer on my XP). Stick 4 gigs and open even more, without loss of performance. In fact if you wanna get Mac OS X experience, just stuff your mobo with RAM and turn off swap, that's it, no need to spend $$$ on Mac to get this "experience" :-))
One last minor correction - Anand tells you "anything more than 2GB of RAM on your PC is useless" but he does not know about /3GB switch (google up "/3GB switch") which again allowed me to run Matlab with THREE gigs or RAM consumed, not two.
Just my 2 cents to debunk some myths that Mac zealots love to spread ;) Don't get caught in that stuff, read docs/mans and be smart.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, April 14, 2006 - link
The source for my H.264 test was the Hoodwinked trailer from Apple's Quicktime trailers site.My comments about memory usage and Windows XP have nothing to do with the /3GB switch. The point I was trying to make is that Windows XP does not do a good job of caching to reduce disk accesses. Microsoft itself has admitted that there's lots of room for improvement, which is why you hear about all of the caching improvements that will be introduced in Vista.
Take care,
Anand
kleinwl - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
BTW: if you don't think that anandtech knows about the /3GB switch you certainly haven't been here very long.Pirks - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
Did Anand ever mention this switch in any of his reviews? Or anyone else besides him from AT staff? I've never seen it before. How about you? Would you provide me with a link or some other proof? I'd love to be corrected here, since AT guys should know about it, and I wish I were wrong stating the opposite, especially about Anand himself.As for the stability - I run Matlab with 3GB consumed routinely, it also loads some Maya 7 stuff internally via my own DLL and there's another Maya 7 hanging around to check results from Matlab quickly, and I never saw a slightest glitch. Of course YMMV but I heard too much "omg windoze is 2GB limited and mac is TrUe 64-bit WoNdEr" and I've got some experience with Matlab on both Mac OS X (no 64-bit matlab there) and WinXP (now this is true 64-bit product) to let Anand repeat that kind of sh.t. Mac guys are ok to say that, they live like this, so no big deal but not Anand please :-) So let's just say "please Anand be a bit more correct in some places and don't sound like a dumb Mac user", saying windows can't properly run a lot of apps at once and stuff like that.
Speaking of Vista I've read somewhere on MSDN that a lot of XP 64 code is in there so it _should_ be as robust as XP 64 with regard to RAM handling. I'm sure after SP1 or SP2 it'll be absolutely rock solid :-)
kleinwl - Thursday, April 13, 2006 - link
I've used the /3GB switch as well... however it can (and does) degrade the stability of your system (running fluent (a CFD program) on XP SP2). I wouldn't run around recommending the normal use of the /3GB switch. Some programs don't even support it (ie. Catia V15). Ultimately we upgraded to XP x64 (which came with it's own headachs).2.5GB seems to be the most that XP SP2 can really handle well.. everything else is a waste. OS X just does a better job handing large amounts of ram and not "losing" it with time.
I am interested is seeing how VISTA will perform and if will be as good as OSX or XP x64 with ram... or something quite better (or worse).