MacBook pro vs. Other windows notebooks

[Walzber813]

I was wondering if I could hear peoples comparisons between the MacBook pro and various comprable Windows Notebooks. I'm looking for a notebook for gaming (mainly wow) and managing all sorts of media (music, photos, videos) as well as minimal editing and lots of school work.

 

[pkme2]

With Bootcamp, you can have Windows and Mac programs on one computer. That's the best for you. You got the right choice.

 

[AmigaMan]

I have both a MacBookPro 2Ghz and a Dell Inspiron 9200. For gaming I like the MacBook better since it's obviosly faster and the screen looks better/brighter than the Dell. That's about the only time I stray into Windows land. I've switched completely to OSX for everything else. On my Inspiron I used it to manage my digital photos when we went on vacation, managed my MP3 collection (small as it may be) and used it as my general web browsing machine. Now I'm completely migrated over to the Mac and use it extensively for everything besides games.
It's also worth noting that I used Ubuntu Linux as my work development environment. But because of the OSX Unix underpinnings, I can do everything in it at work. It's nice to just be able to close the lid at work, open it while I'm at home, connect to our VPN and it's just like I was at the office. I don't have to maintain separate work environments and I'm jsut as productive at home as I am at work...when I'm not playing games.

 

[Commodus]

Will you be using OS X exclusively, or will you be trying Boot Camp? If the latter, make sure it's only for one or two apps you can't get OS X equivalents for. You don't want to reboot constantly if you can avoid it, and you should remember that Boot Camp is still a public beta (albeit a pretty stable one).

In terms of performance, WOW will play properly in either OS X or Windows; it's faster in Windows, but from what I've seen recently it's more a matter of Blizzard needing to implement further optimization than anything OS X is doing. I'd probably stay in OS X just to avoid hassles. Regardless of platform, you'll at least be able to run multiple apps at once, since the Core Duo will take care of background tasks.

 

[halfadder]

We used BootCamp to install WinXP on a second partition on our MacBookPros at work. We rarely dual boot, usually only to play games. The Parallels virtual machine is just as fast for CPU/RAM bound tasks, not much need to dual boot unless you need 3D graphics performance in Windows. Plus Parallels works with just about everything: Win98, Win2K, XP, Solaris x86, Linux, OS/2, even the x86 version of NeXTSTEP, the OS that Mac OS X is based on! www.parallels.com you can even download a free beta for now

Note that while the MacBookPro does have an ATI X1600 GPU, it is underclocked due to the machine's thin size. Some folks have been able to overclock their MacBookPros GPU and mem RAM with ATITool by as much as 120 MHz.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: halfadder
Note that while the MacBookPro does have an ATI X1600 GPU, it is underclocked due to the machine's thin size. Some folks have been able to overclock their MacBookPros GPU and mem RAM with ATITool by as much as 120 MHz.

I'm wondering 2 things about this:

How much of a user-visible impact does that underclocking have?
If I were to use ATITool to reclock the GPU/RAM, is it safe to leave it reclocked permanently? (Assume that I'm not worried about battery life.)

I'm debating whether to get the 17" version. I would use if for:

- A test mule at my work
- Media management (mp3 collection, ipod sync, movies, pr0n, etc)
- Gaming when I travel (I'm an EVE-Online junkie, and also like Oblivion)
- Any other general use for a laptop

It's more of a want than a need, but I can afford it.

 

[halfadder]

Overclocking always has its risks.

The underclock doesn't seem to make a huge impact for non-games. Apple has been demoing the MacBookPro editing HD video just as fast as a decked out dual G5, and in some cases doing effects workin in Shake was just as fasr as a decked out quad G5.