Is it worth buying a Macbook Pro to run Windows?

Richdog

Richdog

Richdog

Caporegime
Joined
8 Sep 2005
Posts
27,716
Location
Utopia
Ok, on the surface it sounds like a stupid question perhaps. But lately I find myself not happy with my current laptop, or any other I have seen in the shops and played with. It seems there are always compromises with the hardware on all the Windows-based laptops I have seen.

I want to have something with best-in-class:

  • Build-quality (Macbook is sublime from what I have seen)
  • (Retina is awesome quality, though I understand it only gives you the same real estate as a 1440 x 900 screen)
  • Touchpad (Macbook as an amazing pad)
  • Keyboard (ditto, it's lovely to type on the Macbook)
  • Battery life (apparently the 2014 Macbook Pro is pretty epic)

The Macbook, especially the 2014 model, arguably has all of these qualities in abundance, in addition to a fully fledged quad-core i7 Haswell, and a reasonably fast Nvidia 750M GPU (less important as I don't game much nowadays).

I read that Windows runs beautifully on Macs, and I guess you then have the option to boot into Mac OS if you should ever need to.

Is it a decent idea? Or are there Windows-based laptops that offer as good as or better performance in all of the areas I listed? The only disadvantage I can think of, other than the obviously higher price attached to a Macbook, is having less storage options (I have an extra HD in the drive bay of my current laptop).

Rival potential laptops that I haven't see in the flesh are:

Dell XPS 15 Touch (similar specs as MBP and has touchscreen QHD resolution option. http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/2/4...s-to-be-the-king-of-portable-windows-machines

Thoughts appreciated. :)
 
Last edited:
Mac build quality is nice but the OS is very poor in my opinion. My work Mac I removed the optical drive for an SSD as it was very slow. Work wise I find that companies just don't support Mac , VMware and Cisco for example. Most OS updates seem to break something. Maverick for example caused havoc with java and some of our VMs. I think there is no reason to use OSx over Linux and even Windows. Apple are playing catch up in the world of OSs.
 
AlecR said:
Paying extra, to run Windows?

I'd only buy a Mac for OS X. The build-quality is nice, but it comes second in my opinion.
Click to expand...

I couldn't disagree more. Windows is my primary OS for pleasure and business, (and that's not realistically going to change), and the hardware to make using it more pleasurable, productive and convenient is key. That's the whole point of the thread, and clearly explained in the OP (if you read it). :)
 
Last edited:
spicypixel said:
DPI scaling isn't upto snuff in windows, expect tiny GUI elements.
They need the pixel doubling that apple do soon.
Click to expand...

Ahh interesting... is noticeably worse?

AlecR said:
Your battery life in Windows will be MUCH worse than in OS X. You'll be lucky to get half of OS X's battery life (that's my experience anyway).
Click to expand...

Also interesting... maybe the new Dell XPS 15 would be a better bet then.
 
The XPS 15 is a good shout, although I really like OS X so maybe the rMBP plus Windows in a VM could be an option for you? Depends on what you're doing though.
 
GTRacer said:
The XPS 15 is a good shout, although I really like OS X so maybe the rMBP plus Windows in a VM could be an option for you? Depends on what you're doing though.
Click to expand...

I use Windows every day for business and pleasure. I like it, I know it intimately from working in IT, and have no desire whatsoever to switch to MacOS as a primary OS. :)
 
Apple driver support is not amazing for Windows. OK it works but its not great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom