Current Ferrari 4005 User, Thinking To Upgrade To Acer 8204 Or Mac Book Pro 2G.

I will try and answer some of your questions. I too was in the market for a new windows laptop, I had actually pre-ordered the new W3J from ASUS. After hearing about bootcamp I thought I would at least go to apples website and check out their laptops. I wanted a laptop that I could use wireless internet, take to school and type and create office documents (word,excel,powerpoint) as well as occasionally game. I have hundreds of dollars invested in Windows based games that I also did not want to give up.
After seeing the insane price for the macbookpro ($1999 and $2499 and now $2899 (2.16ghz)) I thought, NO WAY!!!. Then I heard about the student discount. I was willing to pay $1800 for the W3J and with the student discount the macbookpro came to $1800 bucks. After looking at its specs (very similiar to the W3J except a 15.4" screen vs 14" and 512mb of ram vs 1gig I thought, why not. It is still fast, has a great video card, a fast processor and looks freaking beautiful.

So I read up on bootcamp and the macbookpro. I read about the heat issues and the whine, so I went down to my local apple store located in the mall by where I love. I touched the mbp and it was hot as hell. Granted it had been on for almost 10 hours , but still Then I talked to some guys and they showed me some of the features and I fell in love with it. I went down the next day (1 hour after it opened) and felt the mbp again and it was still hot. Well, because of the student discount ($200 off the $2k one) I got 32% off the 3 year warranty (230+ instead of 330+ or something), so I purchased it along with a 2 button bluetooth mouse and microsoft office for mac.

Since then I have installed bootcamp and it runs windows perfectly. I installed Oblivion and ran it farely smoothly. Connection to the internet was easy with my wireless and the bluetooth picked up the mouse right off the bat (actually, it picks it up faster in windows than in OS X).

I have since run dvd's, games, office documents and have stored all my ipod songs on the Mac partion. The thing runs beautifully but I added 512mb more ram (1gig total). I think that is a must.

With the bluetooth mouse I have right button action on both MAC and WINDOWS operating systems. Even without the mouse you just hold ctrl and use the tap button.

All your adapters that work in Windows should work in the windows partion. As long as your usb drivers are connected they should adapt. Same for your printer. I have yet to install the printer to my laptop, but I assume epson has macintosh drivers (they sell epsons at the apple store).

Remember, bootcamp makese your macbook have the ability to use windows. In windows, everything is the same as if you used windows on a dedicated windows pc only. It runs very smooth and unless you try to use the iSight video camera, you shouldn't have any problems out of the ordinary.

One problem, other than the heat and the whistle is the really sensitive cd player (it is only 24x too). Sometimes even the smallest scratch on a cd will make it so itunes can't read that particular song and then you have to have a fun time trying to eject the cd (it keeps spinning and spinning, sometimes you just have to but your laptop into sleep mode, then awake it and eject the cd).

Lastly, the videocard is heavily underclocked. Most windows laptops with x1600's run them at 470mhz on the core and 470mhz on the ram. Apple decided 310 on the core and 300 on the memory. Using ATI TOOL in windows you can increase those (I run 400core 480 memory). It helps a TON with games.

Anyway, Hope that answered some of your questions and wasn't too long. In the end I believe it was money well spent on the macbook, but I would have looked at windows pc's a little bit more if I knew the macbook was so heavily underclocked on the video card!

Thanks, Barrok - your comments are really helpful. While I agree on the underclocking issue - it sounds like that can be resolved fairly easily...good job!

Well, lets me say this, my friend got a new MB for his desktop computer and his computer couldn't read the cd that came with it. So I tried it on my desktop and it wouldn't work either. Then I tried it on my PB and it was able to read it perfectly. I was able to pull the necessary files off of the cd, no problem. So, I am assuming a couple of scratches won't hurt too much.

I don't have any scratched dvd's to tell you about, but when trying to import songs into Itunes with scratched cd's it makes it tough sometimes. A dvd that is mildly scratched probably will work just fine.

if it's your only computer the optical drive issue can be a pain. i only tend to rip on my iBook if i'm on the go. the vast majority of the time i do it on my desktop, so take into consideration how much u would actually need to. it reminds me of the criticism of the iPod's lack of an FM tuner. ppl rant about how it's a huge detriment, yet in 3 years of having an FM capable mp3 player, i used that function less times than the fingers i have on one normal hand. in terms of the laptop i'm not saying u should be ok w/ ripping limitations, but ask yourself how much u will actually be doing it on your notebook. a 24x CD rip is ok for music, as is 8x rip or burn on a DVD, but it doesn't mean i'm going to do it on my laptop simply bc i can when the faster desktop is available. also, if ripping music or movies is something u do regularly u'd be better served by an external firewire desktop drive and burner anyways. just my 2 cents.

I have all my music files for my ipod stored on my macbook pro. Because of this, I rip the music from my cd's using the macbook, so it can become a pain. I mean, almost all of the time it works, but the small amount it doesn't can be a pain, but not a reason to not buy a macbook.

yeh, but ther's really no reason why u can't rip using iTunes on a desktop and just move the files over to your notebook. i actually have 2 versions of my music library on my desktop. my archives of my CDs @ higher bitrate and then my mobile collection using Apple's AAC codec at 128 bitrate for my iBook and my Nano. it was just faster to rip on the desktop and simply drop the files over the network from my mobile selection.