Update – Windows Vista running on a MacBook Pro

A few days ago I installed Windows Vista and other operating systems on my New MacBook Pro, now some updates on how the experience has been:

1. The keyboard took a bit of work but not as much as I thought, the keys I miss the most are end, home, delete, etc., but I quickly discovered that using Fn and the arrows you can do these functions, for example Fn left arrow is Home, Fn right arrow is End, Fn Delete is delete (delete alone is Tab), etc. The function keys I also miss, but they are used the same way, using Fn and the function you want. All the function keys are used for other things but everything is very well thought out, like turning up the volume, increasing the brightness, etc.

2. The mouse was really easy, I attached a normal external mouse and that was it, right button and everything else enabled, when I am not using the external mouse I just press control and click and that is a right click, or I use two fingers on the mouse pad and click. (this machine has a multitouch pad, I am trying to make applications that take advantage of it, surface-type… but that is another story)

3. At first I had some problems hibernating and putting it in stand-by, but after installing Windows Vista SP1, these problems have been solved and the whole OS works perfectly.

4. I upgraded my machine to 4 gigs of RAM, I bought it on Amazon for 90 dollars, for a normal user it may not be necessary, but I use virtual machines a lot with complete OSes (even the full network, 3 VMs at the same time for testing distributed applications) so the more RAM the better, now I can give up to 1.5 of RAM to each virtual machine (with 2 machines) or 1 mega (with 3 Machines).

5. A problem that had me worried for a while had to do with the temperature the machine reached when I was using Vista, it got very hot, some have reported it on the Internet, but it was only in Vista, not in Mac OS X, searching a bit I found a utility that allows you to configure the minimum speed of the computer's fans, apparently in Vista they are always at minimum speed and that is why the computer got so hot.

Everything else has been perfect, the camera, the audio, etc., has worked wonderfully. Now I am thinking of updating Linux to fedora9, but that will be the topic of another post.

Juan Peláez

Software Architect.

Keywords: Mac Book Pro, Windows Vista SP1.