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Vista Runs Hot on Macbook Pro

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sweaty-legs dept.

PetManimal writes "Ken Mingis, Computerworld's Mac editor, has given Vista a spin on his Macbook Pro in order to review and compare hardware performance with OS X. It's not a rigorous benchmarking, but he does notice a few issues relating to power consumption: 'Since installing Vista, I have found that my MacBook Pro runs hot. No doubt Microsoft hasn't worked on power management issues that might affect Apple hardware, which leaves me to wonder whether I'm slowly cooking the motherboard of my laptop. It's not hot enough to fry an egg on the aluminum case, but my laptop is noticeably warmer than when I use Mac OS X. I've also noticed that battery life is substantially reduced. Once again, energy management for Apple hardware is not likely at the top of Microsoft's list. Once Apple writes updated drivers to work with Vista, I'd expect these issues to be addressed.'"

11 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Submitter seems to have cherry-picked one thing from the article...

    1. Vista runs hot on MacBook Pro because he's using a beta OS without hardware drivers, using a mechanism for running it that itself is still beta. (And uh, I got news for you: everything "runs hot" on MacBook Pro. ;-)

    But:

    2. Apple doesn't support Vista on MacBook Pro and doesn't make Vista drivers for Apple hardware, but probably will after Vista and Boot Camp are both, you know, actually shipping, supported products.

    Seems like the submitter managed to leave out quite a few things from the article, like the fact that the subtitle is:

    Apple's top-end laptop runs Vista better than a high-end Sony Vaio

    ...and pretty much the entire rest of the article, which is downright positive, and managed to only come up with "Vista runs hot on Macbook (sic) Pro", something only mentioned in a couple of sentences on page 3 of the article.

    The author makes claims that while using an unsupported, beta OS on hardware for which driver profiles don't exist in conjunction with another beta, unsupported product (Boot Camp), he wonders whether he's "slowly cooking the motherboard", even given the hardware safeties built in, and then goes on to say that he expects these to be fixed when Apple releases drivers for their hardware that actually work with Vista, and Vista is no longer, oh, I don't know, a beta product, and not even out yet?

    So, why does the entire submission revolve around the ONE item that likely won't be news, and indeed will be completely moot, by the time Vista ships and Apple actually supports Boot Camp as a product (when Leopard ships)?

    1. Re:Wow by daveschroeder · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sorry, not going to happen.

      Windows will continue to be able to run on Parallels Desktop, and the forthcoming VMWare Workstation for Mac OS X. There's no way that Microsoft or anyone else would be able to stop it (unless they continually broke it intentionally, and were specifically devoting engineering efforts to artificially "breaking" Windows on only Mac OS X versions of Parallels and VMWare products, and only Apple hardware (which contains a *lot* of generic Intel components)). It would have to be extremely targeted and deliberate, and would be a feat in its own rite.

      And Windows isn't running on "EFI"; it's running on a Compatibility Support Module, a part of the Intel EFI spec that allows for BIOS backward compatibility. EFI is the future firmware for non-Apple PCs too, so you just showed your ignorance there in spades.

      So, I hate to tell you this, but Windows XP and Windows Vista will continue to be able to be run on all Intel-based Macs, all legally and alongside Mac OS X, and on great hardware to boot, making Apple hardware pretty much the best of all worlds for a great many people, more of whom are discovering this every day.

      But if you're one of those people who just hates Apple or thinks Apple "sucks", you're probably already too ignorant to understand that no one can "make" Windows unable to run on Apple hardware, since Apple hardware is now, by its very nature and as far as the innards go, nothing more than a high-quality PC.

  2. Windows.* runs hot by Archon-X · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Any flavour of windows seems to run hot on a macbook.
    From what I've seen - unless you've got your minerals made out of .. minerals, there's no way you could bear to use one as a true 'laptop' whilst running windows, of any flavour.

  3. Beta Software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Once Apple writes updated drivers to work with Vista, I'd expect these issues to be addressed.

    Hello, McFly (or dumb reporter) but Apple's beta Boot Camp software is not designed to run Vista. You have no reasonable expectation that these issues will be addressed since Apple did not make Boot Camp for Vista. I will say it again -- Boot Camp is beta and it is not designed to run Vista, an operating system that itself is beta.
  4. Non-Scientifc Analysis, Please Stop With The Vista by aldheorte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article, highlighted in the introduction:

    "my laptop is noticeably warmer than when I use Mac OS X. I've also noticed that battery life is substantially reduced."

    Come on, that's not even the center point of the article, nor is that anything but subjective, anecdotal observation. Of one. As someone else has said here in the past, even the plural of anecdote is not data. Get a surface temperature thermometer, get some real data. Who knows? Does this guy sense a 3 degree difference as a lot or a 20 degree difference as a lot? Would either of those differences even matter? Did he run Mac OS X under the same conditions as Vista - was the room temperature the same? How about the apps he was running? I could care less about Vista, but, really, folks, how is this newsworthy that some one guy thinks his one laptop runs hotter running Vista the one time he tried it?

    And please stop with the Vista posts. We don't need daily updates, thanks though.

  5. Why would he expect Apple to fix it? by AugstWest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm running XP in Boot Camp on my Macbook Pro. Battery life is dismal. Heat is outrageous. And if you try to use it like a real laptop, where you close the thing and it suspends, and open it and it resumes, well, you're in for a major disappointment. Half the time the thing goes to sleep, the only way to wake it is by hard rebooting. For some reason, after you shut the thing you hear the USB reconnect sound, and the screen lights up again. While closed. If your commute is very long, you'll arrive home to find a dead laptop battery.

    I'm not bitching, I love this thing, and I'm only using XP to run Eve. Unfortunately, that's turned into "most of the time." I'm just suggesting that people remain realistic about Apple's driver support. Their development time is better spent elsewhere.

    1. Re:Why would he expect Apple to fix it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I have a similar experience - my macbook pro runs very hot whilst running Windows and is tolerable running OS X. The GPU fan makes an awful clunking sound about 20 minutes in when the machine has warmed up, which it never does on OS X despite stressing it with assorted 3D applications. A lot of posts comparing Windows/Vista vs OS X temperatures blame Microsoft. The problem is more likely to lie with the ACPI code written by Apple. Microsoft is a major contributor to ACPI and has the defacto interpreter. The ACPI tables and code are supposed to describe the thermometers, fans, and such like. It is exceedingly unlikely that Windows is not able to deal with this information if it is presented in a correctly. DELL, IBM, HP, et al, all provide ACPI bioses and power management works pretty well on these boxes.

    2. Re:Why would he expect Apple to fix it? by Bert64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, Intel designed and published the ACPI specs, and produce a reference interpreter and compiler for the DSDT...
      Seeing as how close Intel and Apple are nowadays, i would imagine Apple's ACPI implementation complies with Intel's specs.

      On the other hand, Microsoft make their own compiler which has many subtle differences from Intels, in particular it has an ability to ignore many errors that violate the spec and are thus flagged by Intel's compiler. Their implementation of ACPI implements the same tollerence of errors as their compiler, so the two work together well.
      The disadvantage for the rest of us, is that microsoft have never published the changes they made to the ACPI spec, and many systems compiled using their compiler will fail to work on a fully standards compliant ACPI interpreter.
      You would imagine that Apple, not being in posession of microsoft's internal documentation regarding their version of ACPI, would choose to use the official Intel spec, which is readily available from their site.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  6. Why should Apple make Vista drivers... by nelomolen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...considering the hardware is designed and manufactured by *ASUS*? The Asus W2Jb is the non-Apple version of the 17" Macbook Pro (and is superior in my estimation - even sports a built-in TV tuner).

    It seems more likely that, since *ASUS* makes and sells these as Windows laptops, they will be quick to support Vista (and possibly already do).

    For the latest drivers for the 17" Macbo^H^H^H^H^H Asus W2Jb, check this site:

    http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLa nguage=en-us

    Select the W2000 series and the W2J model.

    Do your homework, fool.

    1. Re:Why should Apple make Vista drivers... by laffer1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Asus is one vendor who manufactures apple's products. I doubt asus sells an identical unit with the EFI "bios" and all. However, if Asus helped with the ACPI code, it would explain the entire problem. They have a bad habit of only implementing just enough for the target OS. In the case of pc motherboards, that means other operating systems do not work well on them without hacks. Windows runs fine. Linux tends to work as its intentionally designed to rely on windows acpi information and there are many contributors to fix it. *BSD on the other hand has problem's on Asus motherboards. I've always found it strange that their $100+ motherboards don't work properly with FreeBSD and yet a $50 MSI board works perfectly.

      I don't really care how well Windows runs on one of these. I'd rather hear about Linux and BSD support on them.

      --
      MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
  7. Runs hot on my DELL too! by tomz16 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Vista RC1 runs hot on my Dell Inspiron (WITH proper drivers and WITHOUT aero). I would imagine that enabling aero would easily halve battery life on any laptop out there!

    THIS OS IS BAD NEWS! There is not a single tangible feature about it that I have liked. Apart from being DRM'd up the wazoo. They took XP, and just shuffled and "context-ified" all of the menus to make it as inefficient as possible for any power user. It is absolutely dumbed down to the point of being insufferable. I mean there are LITERALLY modal error dialogs warning you that another modal error dialog will pop up! (I'm not kidding.. something like "Continuing this action will require you to grant administrator approval (ok cancel)" followed immediately by "Do you wish to grant administrator approval?").

    Even simple system tasks are expected to be performed through task oriented wizards that lend no clue as to what is actually happening behind the schenes. (i.e. I want to enable my network connection with a firewall and default to no file sharing. I can't easily get to that menu. I don't know what the correct answer is to vista's question about where I am most likely to use my connection that will yield a firewalled connection without filesharing. I understand that a conf file isn't for everyone, but this is catering to the 3 year olds!)

    One of my degrees is in comp sci. I've taken a GUI design theory classes. It took me > 3 minutes to figure out how to add something to the new start menu (right click, create shortcut isn't there... explore (all) user(s) and I don't have permission to write. I can't drag a shortcut in... hmmm)

    My intention is to avoid "upgrading" as long as I possibly can. As it stands, in my opinon, Vista is a DOWNGRADE from xp!