Should i violate my new 1.8duo 13" with windows? I'm kinda reliant on my windows habits, but i think i should give osx a go, the laptop is ordered but not arrived yet, advise away! no saying get this coz this is 1337 or get this cause that is pants etc, its not big and its not clever! xD
It was bootcamp that finally convinced me to go with a MBP, but I absolutely never use it. In fact I've uninstalled it once, then redid it on a much smaller partition just for those odd times when I want to game on the go (I've got stuff installed to an external USB HDD). For having used Windows since 3.11, and DOS before that, I managed to love OSX in about two hours, and become fairly competent in that time. I'd convert completely, but it would render my very expensive PC quite useless, and OSx86 is both illegal and rather iffy last I tried (though as I do own a legal copy of OSX...?). So for now I've just skinned out my desktop in an OSX theme and used ObjectDock, so at least I'm not switching locations of everything constantly. I'd spend at least a week without it installed. You may find you don't need it at all for what you do. OSX has lots of great features that Windows desperately needs *cough*Expose*cough*, and is quite stable. If you find it necessary to install, I'd avoid relying on it. For one, quite a few things just don't work right (iSight, backlit keyboard though that's only on the MBPs, sound and brightness control keys), and getting by in Windows without a right-mouse button is impossible; just slightly awkward in OSX (you get used to control-click pretty quickly). The one non-game Windows app I needed has since been ported over, though if it were a desktop there would be a couple other things I'd need. Really just my DVD ripping bits, and there's probably an OSX equivalent of them around somewhere. Just about everything else either is unecessary, exists as it should or has an equivalent. Still haven't been able to get O working properly in OSX, but Office for Mac 2004 is better than it is for Windows. And as much as I'd like to be all open-sourcey, MSOffice really is much better than O. Plus battery life is about twice as good in OSX than in XP.
Like Firehed, I bought my macbook (though a regular one for me) when I learned about boot camp. I've never used it and probably never will, but I needed it as a fall back in case I couldn't adapt to osx. You can find an equivalent for almost everything (save games/specialized programs) for osx, and usually for free. As far as word processing goes, neooffice works (and for Intel now), but it is slow and ugly. Try the iwork and ms office trials that come with the computer and then buy one of those, both are rather good. But I digress... Really, you should only put on bootcamp if you need it for a specific program, or really need to have your games on the go. But in that regard, the macbook regular is not that great of a gamer (integrated graphics sigh), but is more than competent across the board otherwise. But you should be able to find an osx app for most common tasks, and many uncommon ones.
If i were to go about booting windows XP pro onto my macbook 2.0ghz duo as i need visual studio 2k5 installed it seems, and well there is various versions etc for mac osx but has anyone got anything i should be aware of, i.e. as the macbook only has one mousepad button does rightclick for windows default to ctrl+click like osx does? Also no 'del' button? :| Just a lot annoying...
