Macintosh Windows x64 Support

Daniel333

hey everyone,

I am thinking of getting a MacBookPro, if only to be trendy. The deciding factor is if boot camp will let me run 7 x64/2008 x64. I can't find any site confirming the availabiltiy of x64bit drivers. Anyone have any experience of a good link for me?

thanks,

dynamik

You shouldn't have a problem; it's just a standard Intel chipset.

EmpoweredBizTech

I am a Mac users and love it you will truly not go back. However I say ditch boot camp all together and purchase VMWare Fusion or Parallel Desktops. If you get a Mac from MacMall.com they tend to have rebates that really help. I run both but mostly VMware Fusion I have virtual computers for just about every operating system including 7 and everything works without a problem. without the need to reboot between operating systems. I have had Win XP, Vista, 2k3, 2k8 and linux all running and talking to each other at the same while still being in the Mac OS. (if you plan on using as a lab make sure you max out the memory)

Daniel333

Yes, this is going to be a lab machine. I wil need some Mac server experience, but ultimately I will need to run Hyper-V on this machine.

So I will have to use boot camp to use it. Per my googling it should be fine.

Hyper-Me

Use bootcamp so you dont have to look at the terrible OSX OS. Bleh.

You will learn to despise OSX if you ever have to support it in a business environment, and good luck ever trying to make it work 100% in an active directory (or even open directory) environment properly.

Fugazi1000

Just to confirm.

A MBP does run Windows 7 x64 natively. You need BootCamp 3 (i.e. OSX 10.6/Snow Leopard) for the drivers and everything works a treat.


Add VMWare Fusion 3 and you can run OSX 10.6 and have your BootCamp Win7 installation running as a VM or boot Win7 directly. No real performance issues with 4GB of RAM unless you have too many VMs. The 13" MacBook Pro gives about 6-7 hours of battery life.

I also happen to have VMWare WS v7 on the Windows install as well. Very versatile tool for demos/playing/studying. You can run vSphere/ESX as a hypervisor on the hypervisor that is VMWare Workstation. 2 ESX + Openfiler and a single laptop can demo VMotion and the like!

Most flexible setup I've ever had.

Daniel333

Thanks for the follow up. I seriously need mac experienece, but the budget just wasn't there... ended up working on my BSCI now since GNS3 makes it affordable.

msteinhilber

Call me stubborn or resistant to change, but just acquired a 13" MacBook Pro Aluminum and I've used it almost exclusively as my primary computer for the last 5 days and I really dislike a lot of the experience.

I absolutely love the look and feel of the hardware, and the battery life is very nice and it has decent specifications as well for a very portable machine. But the OS leaves a lot to be deisred (IMO), I do prefer Windows but this will serve me well as something to carry around and not really have to worry about battery life too much. Just a shame that the drivers available through Apple don't seem to take advantage of power management very well (and this isn't a flaw of Windows as Windows 7 has very good power management capabilities).

Fugazi1000

You are correct about the less good power saving features when running Windows on the MacBook natively. Run it inside Fusion and you get the best of all worlds.

The 'recovery' after hibernating of OSX is near instantaneous. It's a good 15 seconds from opening the lid to actually typing with Windows (both XP and 7).

TechJunky

Hardest change for a windows going to apple is unlearning what he "thinks" he knows.

Apple is VERY versitile if your willing to re-learn.

Thats my .02 cents.

And the OpenDirectory/ActiveDirectory comments are bogus, you just have to know how to setup it up "correctly". There are some hidden jems on purpose. They dont want everyone having a MCSA (oops I meant ACSA). If you know what I mean.