Posted: 10/6/2007 1:09:51 PM EDT
| What can you computer guys tell me about the Mac Pro-Book laptops? Can these run/read PC programs? Do they have good memory & speed? Thanks |
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MacBook Pro. I love mine but I've only had it for a little less than a week. With BootCamp or Parallels you can run any version of Windows either on top of Mac OS or on another partition. The ONLY issue I've had so far is that when I tried to run a .wmv file on MS Media Player for Mac the movie would not run smooth at all (trailer for Halo Wars). Mine has 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 160 GB HD, 2 GB 667 MHz ram, GeForce 8600 256MB video card. I have the glossy 15 inch version and I love it. Just to make life even better, I was able to install the Marathon Trilogy on it! My first FPS from middle school, hehe. |
It can be. I like Mac OS though. And you can actually run Windows in a completely different partition on its own. A friend of mine is running Vista extremely well on an older Pro. |
www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm I love my MacBook Pro. I can even run Bioshock on it. |
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Best laptop out there. I'm typing on a 1 month old MacBook Pro now. Get the 15 inch. It has the more energy efficient LED backlit screen. Yes, you can run both Windows and OSX. Bootcamp requires that you pre-determine what portion of your hard drive to commit to windows. To change that percentage, you would have to re-format the drive. Parallels does this on the fly, so if I was going to choose one, I'd choose Parallels. My advice? Buy the MBP and never use Windows. Why would you want to use an inferior system? The new iWork is totally compatible with MS office, much slicker, and a lot cheaper. |
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Like MacOS X? Get one. They're solid-built machines and are plenty quick. It'll do everything your Windows-based laptop will do. The switch (if you have to switch) over to MacOS X shouldn't be too difficult, but if it is you can just run Windows XP/Vista/whatever via Bootcamp or Parallels. Edit: Battery life is insane. Runs circles around my Compaq with "Centrino" or whatever it is. Hell, I'm still a Windows guy, but my next laptop will be a Macbook Pro. |
| There are three mac Pro books- 2 15 inch and a 17? inch. I'm getting the more expensive 15inch version for my wife as a BDAY gift. I really cannot afford the 17inch but the higher end 15inch I can do. She does alot of graphics work & I am a PC guy- so I know little of the MAC world. |
BS. A PC runs just fine on 1 gig. Etc. I could go on. But I would not buy another.
Right now, the 15 inch is the way to go. It has a new, even better screen that improves battery life. Only get the 17 inch if you really need that size for big-time movie editing. In order to run Windows, you'd need to have bootcamp (free) or parallels, and purchase the Windows OS. But like I said before, you may find that's totally unnecessary. The percentage of new Mac purchases, especially with laptops, is soaring, for good reason. You won't be disappointed. |
The current MBP's have TWO gigs of RAM with their most basic model. Sounds like you're using the 4 1/2 year-old model I just traded in. They also run 2.2 GHz Intel 2 Core Duo. Running the efficient OSX makes the computer quite snappy. |
| I switched from that pc crap to aMAC BOOK PRO and it kicks a@#, there are a couple of ways to run windows and windows programs. My mbp will run games that some pc's won't. You pay a premium for a MAC but I am convinced it is well worth it after 20+ years of pc and Microsoft. |
I'm waiting for Leopard to release in order to jump on a new Mac. I just keep going back and forth between a loaded iMac or a loaded MBP 15-inch. Decisions, decisions....
No kidding? Wow. I'm gonna have to give it a new look, then. 
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IMHO iLife and iWork are the best software deals out there. Photoshop Elements is third. All under $100, and iLife comes with a Mac computer. |
I am planning on buying a new MBP right after Christmas, as I will be starting graduate school, and need a good, fast machine that I can use on campus.
Can you install Bootcamp once you have the machine w/o reformatting the HDD? How superior is Parallels in terms of actual function?
I have Office X on my iBook G3 and iMac G5. Is iWork better than running Office X? Thanks! |
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I've been loving mine for over a year now. OS X is a great OS, even more so for someone who knows a little about *nix operating systems. It runs Windows also, just as well as any PC. Boot Camp is nice if you want native Windows, that will dedicate all of your resources to the operating system which means better performance and ability to use the graphics card natively, at the loss of some hard drive space. Parallels is a good choice if you just have a few apps that you need to run in Windows occasionally. I think VMWare Fusion may be better though, I've tried it and it's nice. VMWare Fusion can also boot into your Boot Camp partition, not sure if Parallels does that or not. Disadvantage there is sharing your RAM with OS X and Windows at the same time and limited graphics acceleration in Windows. I originally bought mine because I thought I'd probably use Windows all the time and I thought of it as a nice laptop that can run just like a PC. After owning it for a while I almost never use the Windows side anymore. |
No it's a 1 year old Macbook Pro. |
| Here's a WSJ article about Fusion vs. Parallels vs. BootCamp. |
) distro of UNIX available (OS X) 
. ANd it's only going to get better once Leopard comes out
There hasn't been a 1 GB MacBook Pro in years. Hell, my wife's basic 3 1/2 year old (plain) MacBook is more than 1 gig. Enjoy life on the dark side. |
Well that sucks. They shouldn't sell them with that little ram in my opinion. Kinda like some people selling Vista machines with 512 MB of ram. |
Find me a Mac that can run Solidworks natively. And COSMOS. Hell, I'll settle for Inventor. That's right. You can't. OSX ain't better if it can't run the programs I need to run. It's just different and less capable. I've got no beef with the MacBook line of hardware. But I just don't like OSX, and I can't use it to put food on the table. |
They never DID sell them with that much RAM. Back then they were called PowerBook G4s, and were cutting edge at the time. MacBook Pros don''t have 1 GB of RAM. |
Wrongo. |
One of my friends has one and he's had all kinds of problems with his. Overheating, not being able to wake up from sleep mode, and worse, waking up while the monitor is closed and the laptop is inside the case, crashes every few days, the monitor panel thing is bent, the speakers emit a horrible feedback noise sometimes. He took it to the Apple store and all they told him to do was reformat the hard drive 
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I stand corrected. I was confusing GHz. Anyway, I just replaced a 4 1/2 yo titanium PowerBook G4 with 1 GB of Ram. It was totally functional for all my needs. But the latch had broke (my fault), the battery finally died, and given all the new features, I just upgraded to a new MBP. I at least doubled everything (Ram, procssor speed, hard drive...), plus a lot of new features (camera, software..). Even with one GB, the old laptop was fine with the latest OSX, so I still don't understand the whole issue. |
Well I don't know what to tell you. In my opinion it is slow. The people at the Apple store said its running fine; I find that dissappointing. |
That should be good timing; if you can wait another couple of weeks, the big January Apple tradeshow could bring announcements of new hardware. That show is January 14-18. The chances of MBPs getting a bump then aren't strong (they did get a little refresh this spring / early summer) but the possibility's there. It's up to you.
Yes. I did so (yet again) just the other day. No problems. You can destroy the Boot Camp partition and reclaim that space for OSX anytime as well. Be advised that Boot Camp may change after late October, with the release of the new "Leopard" version of OSX (10.5), but I would expect this aspect of the functionality to remain.
I find that Parallels incurs a noticeable performance hit, and lacks some features (good 3D, for example) so its suitability depends on your needs. Most of mine aren't really performance-intensive, so I get by with an XP instance in Parallels and a Vista install on Boot Camp. I don't use either very often. Things get a little trickier if you want to triple-boot for some reason (I did OSX Tiger, OSX Leopard and XP for a while) but that's possible, too. Having the ability to fire up a quick instance of XP is convenient for most cases. What's your anticipated Windows usage?
I prefer using iWork to Office X, but one of my reasons is performance. iWork can run natively on the Intel boxes, so it's substantially faster than Office running under emulation. The other reason is that I find iWork to be more enjoyable to use, but that's somewhat subjective. It's sort of a new take on office application interoperability. Office X is getting very long in the tooth, and it shows. Other people with different needs may miss some features that are missing, but all of the fundamentals are there as far as I know. |
Cool. I'm not expecting an update in January, but it would just seriously suck to buy a machine that's superseded two weeks later. 
Games are almost definitely going to want Boot Camp for the native 3D support and full use of CPU. I'm not .mil so I'm clueless on the rest. If they are CPU or memory-intensive, you'll probably want to put them on BC as well. I'd ask around on that bit. Be advised that, though Parallels touts its ability to use your Boot Camp partition as its virtual boot drive, when I tried it I ran into a mess of activation problems and soon couldn't boot to that partition with BC. Pilot error is possible, but I'm not going to try that again. |
I've been running with Parallels using my Boot Camp partition for a year or so with no problems, but I'm not a heavy Windows user. Maybe once a month. I'm trying to quit. 
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Pssh i bought mine last year and it only came with 512. I had to buy more. |
I have a 2.16 Ghz MBP that I bought in January. It came with 1 GB of RAM. I upgraded it to 2 GB because I sometimes run XP in Parallels. Fantastic machine, I absolutely love it. |