Anyone got a MACBOOK?

[flcherb]

Hi there i am thinking of getting a Macbook and running Windows XP on it. Has anyone any experances with doing this?

Thanks All

Herb

[frumpet]

Whilst possible due to bootcamp I wouldn't recommend it.

My brother has the basic Macbook and after running XP natively for a few hours the macbook gets so hot it literally scalds your hands and makes it almost impossible to use. He measured the CPU temp at 94 degrees during one test so god knows what that temperature is doing to component life.

In OS X though the macbook is fine and runs warm but not excessively hot. Apparently this is due to advanced power management features that are not available in XP (but are, by some accounts, in Vista)

I don't know whether this issue has been sorted or relieved by bootcamp v1.1.

IMO if your wanting to run XP get a pc based laptop. The macbook is still best suited to OS X at the moment unless your wanting to use laptop coolers, etc.

[trashcanmonkey]

id say go for it! The Macbook is a great little machine, hot yes, but Apple is continuing to reduce this problem, New MB firmwear lately for example, there are reports of it dropping the heat by up to 20C...
And BC 1.1 is also a big improvement, most of the extra features eg isight now work in XP..
Xp works well, but OSX is what you'd be buying for..

[Bluecube]

Is the heat issue not due to a bug in either the mobo firmware or the OS resulting in the CPU running full blast all the time instead of speedstepping down when required? I think this is/ was an Intel problem and Apple have released a fix for this.

[Spud1]

I have a macbook, and have owned one since mid-june. I don't currently run windows XP on it (why would I? I have OSX...), but I did for the first few weeks to see what it was like..and because i'm a geek (well i post on here don't I) so obviously the first thing you have to do with a new toy is 'mod it' to a point lol.

The installation went fine - boot camp partitioned, created driver disk, i rebooted and XP installed nicely. All the drivers then installed fine, rebooted and it was just like having XP on a none-apple notebook. There were only three problems that I encountered.

1) No right click support for the trackpad - you had to use an external mouse. This has been fixed in the latest boot camp, so no longer a problem.
2) Sound was always through the speakers - even with headphones plugged in. Again this has now been fixed with bootcamp 1.1
3) iSight (built in webcam) does not work..this is still a problem but then I almost never use it anyway, even in OSX (not until iChat support msn anyway)

Other than that it was fine. The only thing I really did with it was install a few games - all of which ran fine. I was using an external mouse with the laptop on the desk most of the time, so didnt notice the heat..but i'll come back to that.

I now only have OSX on there (after a successful experiment with Vista also), as I have my desktop machine for games now, but to come back to the heat thing... even in OSX the macbook gets _very_ hot. This is due to the processor and the amount of heat that it puts out when its being used. It gets hot enough that I can't rest it on my bare legs - but as long as i'm wearing jeans or slacks or something it doesn't get too hot to use, even after extended use (4hrs plus).

Apple has struck a delicate balance between noise and heat - none of the temps it produces are dangerous to the components, and it doesn't get too noisy. Sure it's hot - but would you prefer a fully functional performing notebook that gets hot but doesnt deafen you with fans, or one that clocks back its CPU and turns on the wind turbines when it gets hot?

[flcherb]

I went for one the 2ghz white one. I have installed XP and it works fine great with games and movies it does not get that hot as well which is nice. It only gets hot when you are running it on mains but it is not that hot for me. the screen is lovely as well. I love it :@))))))))

Herb.