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These things keep getting harder to resist, and I'm a Windows user. Can anyone tell me if it's true that Windows on boot camp doesn't take advantage of all of

These things keep getting harder to resist, and I'm a Windows user. Can anyone tell me if it's true that Windows on boot camp doesn't take advantage of all of the power saving features, and so doesn't last as long? And if so, how big is the difference?

markkanof 15y ago
Paul Thurrott did a review of running Windows on a Macbook Air and seems to indicate that the battery life is in the same general time as Apple estimates for OS X. http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air-windows-7-part-imperfect-storm-135952 http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air-wi...
drivebyacct2 15y ago
On a full Macbook Pro, Windows is unable to force the use of the integrated graphics card, and thus always uses the dedicated. This results in a much warmer piece of aluminum and decreased battery life. I despised using Bootcamp for the while I did. Ubuntu is limited as well. I'm not sure if this will change with Window 7's ability to boot from EFI or with GRUB2 now supporting EFI. If I recall there are several bits of the Apple/MBP EFI implementation that causes things to not work as smoothly as they should... some things that Apple either cut corners with or did intentionally to force you to keep OS X on the hard drive, not sure which.
angrycoder 15y ago
You lose so much running Windows via bootcamp that I don't bother anymore and just use VMware fusion. Only having access to the nvidia graphics makes the laptop too damn hot & drains more battery. Having to manually dink around with the fans is annoying as well. The deal breaker is the gimped functionality of the trackpad. With the i5/i7 processor and 8 gigs of ram, I haven't noticed a large difference in performance between running windows in bootcamp vs the VM. This was not the case on my old core 2 duo macbook. I only use windows on my laptop for development work though, if you are looking to run windows for games, obviously the performance won't be the same in a VM.

markkanof 15y ago

Paul Thurrott did a review of running Windows on a Macbook Air and seems to indicate that the battery life is in the same general time as Apple estimates for OS X. http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air-windows-7-part-imperfect-storm-135952 http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/macbook-air-wi...

drivebyacct2 15y ago

On a full Macbook Pro, Windows is unable to force the use of the integrated graphics card, and thus always uses the dedicated. This results in a much warmer piece of aluminum and decreased battery life. I despised using Bootcamp for the while I did. Ubuntu is limited as well. I'm not sure if this will change with Window 7's ability to boot from EFI or with GRUB2 now supporting EFI. If I recall there are several bits of the Apple/MBP EFI implementation that causes things to not work as smoothly as they should... some things that Apple either cut corners with or did intentionally to force you to keep OS X on the hard drive, not sure which.

angrycoder 15y ago

You lose so much running Windows via bootcamp that I don't bother anymore and just use VMware fusion. Only having access to the nvidia graphics makes the laptop too damn hot & drains more battery. Having to manually dink around with the fans is annoying as well. The deal breaker is the gimped functionality of the trackpad. With the i5/i7 processor and 8 gigs of ram, I haven't noticed a large difference in performance between running windows in bootcamp vs the VM. This was not the case on my old core 2 duo macbook. I only use windows on my laptop for development work though, if you are looking to run windows for games, obviously the performance won't be the same in a VM.