MacBook runs Vista Ping!
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Posted on 06/16/2008 11:08:41 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Through a long and circuitous route, I ended up at the Apple Store in Braintree, Massachusetts yesterday, and bought a MacBook. The where, what, and why of this transaction may be of interest.
(Or it may not. I will at least point out that among my blogging pet peeves are the incessant morons out there who agonize over a PC purchase via a dialog with blog readers. Fear not, I've done it too. At least this time I'm just providing a post-mortem.)
Why? Though I have a steady stream of PCs coming through here, I buy my own hardware, if only for continuity's sake. We're doing our third straight home swap this summer (this time in Dublin, Ireland instead of Paris, France), so I am facing a multi-week trip away from home and need something reliable. Last year, we were gone for four weeks, and my computing environment in Paris basically consisted of a loaner ThinkPad T61 (highly recommended, by the way) and my 2006-era first-generation MacBook, which dual-booted between OS X and Vista.
About that MacBook, btw: I purchased it in June 2006, exactly two years ago. As many of you know, I like to keep a foot in the Apple world so I can at least keep up with what's going on there. The original MacBook was the first Intel-based Mac laptop, so it could dual-boot between Windows and OS X with Boot Camp. On the minus side, the first-gen version utilizes a Core Duo processor, not Core 2 Duo and can be expanded to just 2 GB of RAM. I had the 2 GHz white model.
Over the past two years, the MacBook has proven to be an excellent travelling companion. It's a great size and weight. It runs Vista comfortably, despite the RAM ceiling. As loaner machines have come and gone, I've returned again and again to the MacBook. From a reliability perspective, it's been good, I guess: I've had to replace both the DVD writer and the hard drive, but because I purchased AppleCare (expensive at $300), these fixes were free. Apple's in-store support is excellent, and notably so. (I also had to get the case repaired because of the red-brown smudging that afflicted many first-gen MacBooks. This required a bit of complaining on my part until a random Apple executive saw a blog post on the Nexus and intervened. It still gets really dirty, but whatever, it's white.
Why now? (When) As mentioned previously, we're going away this summer and its time for an upgrade. I'm also going away for all of next week, to Sonoma, with the wife and two friends, and need to be able to work from the road. I was going to bring the MacBook (with Vista), but in a weird coincidence, the hard drive came up lame about a week ago. I messed around with it a bit and then brought it to the Apple Store this past Saturday. I didn't make an appointment, and despite some silliness about walking me over to a Mac to make one for 5 minutes later, I was pretty happy with the treatment. They agreed it was probably the hard drive (apparently, the big gray "X" at startup is an obvious signal) and told me they'd look at it and get back to me.
I had been researching laptops for a while now. I looked at various ThinkPads (R, T, and X), of course, and some Dells (XPS 1330/1530). Based on my experiences with various HP notebooks and Tablet PCs recently, I ruled them out. I've always had a strange fascination with Sony notebooks, but ... eh. I hate pulling the trigger on something like this.
Given that it's been about two years since I purchased the first MacBook, I figured I was due for a new Mac. (So is my wife, come to think of it: She's stuck on a PowerPC-based Mac mini still, if you can believe that.) I discussed the upcoming notebook purchase(s) with her and arrived at what I thought might make sense: Instead of purchasing a $1200 PC and a $1500 next-gen MacBook (whenever they shipped), I could actually "save money" (I know, I know) by purchasing a 15-inch MacBook Pro for about $2000. My wife actually bought this argument, not because she's an idiot (she's not) but because I think she long ago gave up when it comes to anything I can even remotely justify as being work-related. I was going to buy it online, but because of the timing, I decided to wait until we got back from Sonoma.
Where... Sunday morning, the Apple Store called: The hard drive was replaced and the MacBook was ready. After getting my Firefox 3 review posted, I headed over there to pick it up. While there, I figured, what the heck, I'll look over the notebooks. Looking at the MacBook Pro, I was struck by how old the design was (and how much like the old 12-inch G4-based PowerBook I used to own). I was also struck by the heft (size/weight), which despite being good for a 15-inch design, was still bigger than I was used to.
Turning past the MacBook Air (not powerful enough, not expandable enough), I looked at the MacBook. I really like the form factor. I really like the size/weight. The new ones can go to 4 GB of RAM and handle 64-bit Windows if needed. Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz on the higher-end black model.
And here's the thing: I know they're getting upgraded. But instead of making me want to wait, that fact had been making me nervous. I like this machine: What if they screw it up with a larger touch-enabled trackpad or whatever? These might not be around soon. In fact, looked at the right way these things are mature and as good as they're going to get ... right now.
"Looking to buy a MacBook?" the guy asked. Yes, yes I am.
So I walked out of there with 2 MacBooks, the old one and the new one. The system had a 250 GB hard drive, not the 200 GB hard drive advertised in the store (I think I had read about this happening), so I booted it up at home, used Boot Camp to squeeze Leopard into a sad little 32 GB partition, and gave Windows about 200 GB. Installed Vista Ultimate and got to work with my apps.
So I guess I save some money there, sort of. I've always preferred the black color, and its a nice looking machine. It runs Windows wonderfully, and 4 GB of RAM is on the way from Crucial. (BTW: $103 for 4 GB of RAM? We live in a time of plenty, people.)
So a couple of closing points.
You can get a ThinkPad T61 for about the same price as the MacBook. You can get a ThinkPad R-series for less. The Mac runs both OS X and Windows, however. It's a bit smaller than the T-series.
Apple support is excellent. It just is. That I've had to use it as often as I have, however, is somewhat troubling. I'd just point out that notebooks get beaten up and then having support in place (RE: AppleCare in this case) is required.
I wonder if my old white MacBook batteries will work in this new black MacBook? Hm.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Personally I usually prefer VMware Fusion so I can run both concurrently, but there are some times when Windows really needs to talk to the hardware directly, and it does run marginally faster without the VM layer.
Apple is a hardware company. They make great hardware. They don't try to compete at the ultra-low end. They're smart, and they're making money hand over fist.
We will see a lot of this "Windows on Mac hardware" stuff.
You would see plenty of Windows computers running Mac/OS on a dual boot. But Apple doesn't permit this
It would put the little snots at Apple on the bread lines
There are millions and zillions of computers out there that can run an Apple/OS just as well as an Apple computer. Only thing holding them back is
a) It is against the law
b) Apple has the OS and motherboard BIOS rigged to make is very difficult to flawlessly run and update the Apple OS on standard computers
Dennis, Dennis, Dennis... you can't make a comment without a slur. Sad.
Your jealousy is unbecoming—those "little snots" have created the best operating system in the world. If you want to run OS X, BUY a Mac—even a used one—it'll work fine.
I really meant to say -— The precious little snots at Apple
And you know darn well why they are too chicken shit to allow anyone to buy their OS and put it on equipment they want
What has Apple ever done to you to earn such vile hatred? Did Steve jobs pee in your porridge? I am truly curious.
Any word on updated Macbook Pros? I looked up the new Centrino 2 chips on Wikipedia and it said in mid-July for those. How much after that before we can expect to see them in Macbook Pros? Any other design changes? I love the look of them now, but some changes here and there would be nice.
I'm a bit surprised Paul didn't swap out the hard drive himself in his old MacBook since it is readily accessible from the battery compartment. Perhaps it was an excuse to zip down to the Apple Store! ;-)
Just stating fact.
Maybe they’re just smart enough to know that an OS - any OS - is at its best when it’s running on a system it was designed to run on. I’ll take the quality of an Apple computer over the quality of an off-the-shelf PC any day.
And by the way, facts do not contain invective or ad hominem attacks.
Just sayin’....
Oh woe! Would if they only have the enlightened licensing/upgrade policies of MSFT!!! LOL.
So that they could end up with the computing wonderland that is Microsoft?
Dude, that's funny!
You may find Microsoft's model chaotic and confusing, but what do you think the hardware market and would look like if everone used Apple's methodology?
My view of Microsoft is that they tried to own the entire market, and the market repudiated them. They were done in by their own greed and Byzantine marketing schemes.
Apple went their own way, with the idea that 'if you build it they will come'. I did- I've been using Macs pretty much exclusively since 1981. I can make my way around a PC, but it's so unpleasant that I go out of my way to avoid it.
It's my considered opinion that Microsoft has irretrievably lost. They're not going to go away, per se, but the consumer market has no use for them anymore.
And that's a good thing.
What do you thing the hardware market will start to look like if everyone adopts Apple's development and marketing model, and will that be a good thing?
Reminding myself....
Reminding myself....
Well, yeah, apple doesn’t want to spend all it’s time and energy making sure OSX works with hardware configurations that changes at the drop of a hat. Apple feels the only way they can provide an excellent operating system is to have complete control over the the core hardware system.
Every Operating System has it’s limits, from mainframes to palms. XP runs on everything and is easy to use but it’s bloated, insecure and unstable. Linux runs on everything but it has an horrible UI and not that easy to set up. OSX is secure, stable, easy, beautiful UI but you can only run it on Mac Hardware.
The question is what trade offs do you want to make.
Did you forget you already reminded yourself? :)
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