proof of fairness
December 14, 2009
last week, i ranted about the incomprehensibility of trying to make Windows + VMWare Fusion “just work.” desperately needing a final solution to my problem, i broke down and did something i thought i would never do: partitioned my hard drive, and installed Windows via Boot Camp.
for the uninitiated, Boot Camp is Apple’s neat & clean solution for Mac users in the Intel age to install Windows inside its own little box, away from OS X.
VMWare left a pretty unsightly mess on my hard drive, so after a whole lotta’ haranguing and a thorough 10-hour disk defrag (thanks also in part to the massive amount of video work i’ve done on my MBP), i was finally ready to get Boot Camp rolling.
install was pretty brain-dead simple: once BC properly partitioned my hard drive, i popped in my (legit) install disc of Windows 7 (64-bit) and let everything just run. after initial installation, i swapped out the Win disc for my Snow Leopard disc to finish installing appropriate drivers. its still quite impressive how fast Windows 7 flies on this machine, particularly when its not sharing resources when its installed in a virtual environment.
so today was the big test: we were gonna attempt to stream our office lunchtime Advent Devotional (the purpose for this entire experiment). first step: connecting to the wireless network. if you’ll recall, this was probably the biggest headache from my last post. perhaps its a difference between XP and 7, but once i got past a small hiccup and let Windows “figure it out,” i was on the network, full-on. next came the streaming, which required connecting the camera. this was the second biggest headache from my last experiment, so my hopes were low, but amazingly, everything connected just as it should have. and then when it came time to air, everything went surprisingly well. my only quibble was with the Adobe FME software: although it said it was producing an archive file of the taping in FLV format, the final product wound up being corrupt and unusable.
hrm.
anywho: there it is. i had a reasonably good experience within a full workload with Windows 7. a couple of problems:
- trackpad sensitivity- WHOA. tracking is crazy and there’s little to no room for error when navigating around. i can’t seem to find the Control Panel to fix this.
- battery life- this one i can’t make sense of. my battery life goes down the toilet when i’m in Windows. odd, considering after about 10 minutes of yawning at the eye candy of Win7, i switched all of it off.
so there you go. i still would never trade the user experience of OS X for Windows 7 and booting back into OS X feels like i have breathing room again. but in a pinch, and when needed for the random MS Publisher file or Powerpoint 2007 creation, i think i’ll be fairly comfortable.
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word. control panel is def a quirky change from xp, (settings in OSX are the best for sure). I still am quite impressed with win7. Weird about the battery though.
Glad to hear it, d00d. I’d suggest plugging in a mouse rather than using the trackpad. I’ll give Win7 a go in early ’10.