Vista Runs Hot on Macbook Pro

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.'"

Comments

Wow

[daveschroeder]

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)?

Re:Wow

[Coward the Anonymous]

So, why does the entire submission revolve around the ONE item that likely won't be news, and indeed will be completely moot

You must be new here, welcome to Slashdot.

Re:Wow

[IvanD]

At least it wasn't a Dell, with a Sony battery and a Maxtor HDD! That would probably blow a whole builing!

Re:Wow

[Ruff_ilb]

That's why we have commenters and an excellent moderation system.

Not to troll, but...

[Ryan Amos]

Why is this news? A beta OS doesn't run at full capacity on a specific piece of hardware? More likely is that Apple needs to release Vista power management drivers. They probably will do so once Vista is officially released. It's not really worthy of a news posting; maybe as a footnote in a larger review of Vista itself.

Re:Not to troll, but...

[supabeast!]

"Why is this news? A beta OS doesn't run at full capacity on a specific piece of hardware? More likely is that Apple needs to release Vista power management drivers."

Just think about it this way - posting garbage like this keeps Zonk off the streets, where he's sit around all day leeching power to code useless PPC linux F/OSS apps on a used toilet-seat iBook in-between bottles of Mad Dog 20/20. Be sure to respond to stories like this, or he might go the way of John Katz, and end up out in the real world inflicting himself upon the rest of us.

Beta Software

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Um... a few things...

[MSFanBoi2]

First, why is this even considered news?

Second, last I checked Vista was not complete. If people even bothered to read the release notes for RC1 you would see Microsoft specifically mentions that the power savings functionality is not yet complete.

Third, as was mentioned multiple times by the reviewer, Apple has not released drivers for Vista yet. Since when is this Microsoft's fault?

Re:I concur

[nmb3000]

My guess was that Windows' System Idle Process was using CPU cycles even when nothing else was

Damned System Idle Process, regularly hogging 100% of my CPU! I bet it uses even more in Vista!

So I try to end the process and Task Manager gives me some BS about it not being valid. What if I want to use a different idle process? Hmm? Vendor lock-in! Monopoly!

Just one more reason to drop M$ and Windoze if you ask me.

Re:Better than an almost year old Sony

[Sillygates]

This guy compared a dual core apple to a single core vaio. Thats hardly a fair representation of a high end PC vs apple benchmark.

Also, acording to a few reports, the MacBook has an underclocked gpu (possibly to reduce heat), so it may not be able to even match a similarly loaded machine, at least when it comes to directX/OpenGL, Vista's territory.