Posted: 7/16/2013 12:47:42 PM EDT
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I have a 3 year old 17"HP laptop running W7 for work. This was top of the line 3 years ago but is starting to show signs of age. In the last 3 years the HP the screen broke (dim to the point of not seeing it), it crashed unrepairable twice ($300 bucks each time to fix) and 3 batteries. A current 8gb/500hd/256SSD/I7 Laptop costs about $1600. I can get it through work with a 3 year battery warranty and 4 year on site repair. It is an HP elitebook. It has no dvd drive. I have an imac at home that is flawless. That brought me to thinking about running W7 Pro on a partition on a new Mac Book pro. Any thoughts? Will ALL or nearly ALL plug ins like crystal reports, Java etc run just like a widows machine? Thanks for your advice. 
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Buy this: And the answer to your questions is "Yes, to all of the above". There's no need to put Windows on it's own partition, and dual-boot. EDIT: Well, almost no need. How much RAM does your iMac have? |
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it crashed unrepairable twice ($300 bucks each time to fix) and 3 batteries. So how'd they fix it? 
Anyways, yes it will run as long as it's intel. How old is your mac? No performance guarantees, but it will run it. Get yourself a PC laptop and keyboard if that is what you are used too. Also, read the tutorial on how to setup boot camp. Its easy, but read up first. |
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Windows on a Mac is just like Windows on anything else. This. 7 Pro works fine on my Macbook Pro (Retina). Just running it bootcamped. Only issues I have had is the keyboard backlight doesn't work nor can I use the apple mouse when on the windows side. I have to connect to some really oddball USB devices with it at work. Other then one quickly resolved driver issue, it has been problem free. That said, I only venture over to the windows side of the machine for that sort of stuff (I program home automation control systems for a living). |
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Buy this: And the answer to your questions is "Yes, to all of the above". There's no need to put Windows on it's own partition, and dual-boot. EDIT: Well, almost no need. How much RAM does your iMac have? That too. I have Win7, Win8 and PCLinux running on my Retina 
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Buy this: And the answer to your questions is "Yes, to all of the above". There's no need to put Windows on it's own partition, and dual-boot. A big +1 for this. I used to have a BootCamp partition for Win on my old macbook, but it was a PITA. VMWare VFusion is great. I have Win7 Pro on it on my MBP, do all of my C/C#/C+ programming in the VM as well as the occasional game. |
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Windows on a Mac is just like Windows on anything else. This. 7 Pro works fine on my Macbook Pro (Retina). Just running it bootcamped. Only issues I have had is the keyboard backlight doesn't work nor can I use the apple mouse when on the windows side. I have to connect to some really oddball USB devices with it at work. Other then one quickly resolved driver issue, it has been problem free. That said, I only venture over to the windows side of the machine for that sort of stuff (I program home automation control systems for a living). The bootcamp driver pack should allow all of those things to work. You did install the drivers correct? Windows wont do it automatically. |
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I run windows 7 pro on a macbook pro. I use the bootcamp partition.
I run autocad lite 2009 and some skeet software (database program) on the windows side and do most everything else on the mac o/s. It is a minor pita to restart the notebook when I need to run something under windows - but not too bad overall. I do notice that the battery runs much hotter in win 7 than it does under the mac o/s. |
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Windows on a Mac is just like Windows on anything else. This. 7 Pro works fine on my Macbook Pro (Retina). Just running it bootcamped. Only issues I have had is the keyboard backlight doesn't work nor can I use the apple mouse when on the windows side. I have to connect to some really oddball USB devices with it at work. Other then one quickly resolved driver issue, it has been problem free. That said, I only venture over to the windows side of the machine for that sort of stuff (I program home automation control systems for a living). The bootcamp driver pack should allow all of those things to work. You did install the drivers correct? Windows wont do it automatically. Drivers are installed and current. The mouse shows up correctly in the list of devices on the windows side, just doesn't work. I checked, driver is current. Have attempted to repair, deleted and reinstalled drivers, unpaired and reran Bluetooth discovery/pairing. Just won't work. No problems on the Apple (Mountain Lion) side. Never looked into the keyboard backlight issue, never gave a crap enough to. |
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The new mac book pro's run about about $2500 with an I7, 8gb ram and a 512SSD. Both the RAM and SSD are not upgradeable down the road. Seems like by the time I add Windows7 and Office Pro I'm up to $3000.00. OUCH!
Thinking it may just be better to buy the HP ultrabook with a 4 year warranty for $1600 plus the $200 or so for office 2013. |
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I have a 2011 MBP 17" (i7 2.2 quad-core, 16GB RAM). I recommend getting an older or non-retina MBP that has an i7 and the DVD drive. The reason being is that it's relatively cheap to outfit it the way I've done mine with a 512GB SSD and a 1TB mechanical HD in place of the DVD drive. Run multiple instances of Windows 7 Ultimate under VMWare Fusion simultaneously with absolutely no performance issues whatsoever, aside from reduced battery life when the VMs are running.
I wouldn't even mess with separate BootCamp partitions, VMWare runs flawlessly on the SSD. Before installing the SSD, the performance was a bit lacking. The newer retina MBPs will cost you a fortune for a large SSD and they don't even have the physical space for a second mechanical HD. |
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Buy this: And the answer to your questions is "Yes, to all of the above". There's no need to put Windows on it's own partition, and dual-boot. EDIT: Well, almost no need. How much RAM does your iMac have? This right here. Fusion 5 is perfect AND you can copy the HP laptop, WHOLLY INTACT and functional, to a VM on the Mac |
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The new mac book pro's run about about $2500 with an I7, 8gb ram and a 512SSD. Both the RAM and SSD are not upgradeable down the road. Seems like by the time I add Windows7 and Office Pro I'm up to $3000.00. OUCH! Thinking it may just be better to buy the HP ultrabook with a 4 year warranty for $1600 plus the $200 or so for office 2013. You can opt to just get a non retina mac book pro since that is a huge savings and then another big savings is getting a regular hard drive not ssd. |
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The non-retina display Macbook Pros available now through the apple store have conventional ram and hard drive arrangements that are very much upgradeable down the road. The changeover to hardwired ram and storage comes with the jump to a retina model.
The 13" Pro available now maxxes out at 16gb of ram. (Apple says 8gb, Mactracker says 16gb, Apple has a long history of being full of shit with it's max ram size, I go with Mactracker's data.) |
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You can opt to just get a non retina mac book pro since that is a huge savings and then another big savings is getting a regular hard drive not ssd. Without checking, I bet the drive in the non-retina is a 5400rpm drive. Snore. Like, how the fuck is a modern firm even putting that in a laptop that retails for over $300 these days? But whatever. Most people won't notice. They make plenty of SSD replacements in a 2.5 sata configuration. |
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Buy this: And the answer to your questions is "Yes, to all of the above". There's no need to put Windows on it's own partition, and dual-boot. EDIT: Well, almost no need. How much RAM does your iMac have? Yep, I've got VM3, 4, and 5 between several MACs and it works great with XP and 7. |
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Subnet nailed it. Rather than run it in a partition, why not run Windows on a virtual machine hosted by the Mac OS? Unless your Windows installation needs direct access to the hardware, that would work just fine. I'm running a MacBook Pro for work. I have multiple VMs on it under VMWare Fusion, one of which is Windows. It all runs just fine. |
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I run Windows 7 on my MacBook Air using Parallels. It works perfectly. You don't even need to leave the Mac environment to work in Windows. Just fire up Parallels and use both simultaneously. + 1 awesome software Use it everyday - day trader ;) Scottrade elite only offers windows programs 
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