09-27-2008, 06:05 PM

Hello guys and girls, i am new on the forums and i really needed a few questions answered.

I will start of by saying i have a Acer Extensa 5420 laptop with windows vista on it, i want to trade for a MacBook Pro (one of my family members). I am really confused on what i should do. The 1st thing is i want to boot camp to vista on the mac, i will buy the c.d (Home premium) and install that, (mac currently has leopard) I want to ask a few things;
1.) Can i boot to vista or only xp.
2.) Will anything (viruses etc) affect the mac portion if i get it on vista?
3.) Will it affect my performance? ( Only vista vs. Mac + Vista)
4.) Can i use Tune up Utlities (boot/login screen changer) on vista when dual booted?
5.) How much should i Partition? I Will use mac for surfing, e-mail, photos, videos, and use vista for games, documents e-mail and surfing, some music/photos/video.

I really need those answered and the opinion based question is, should i switch?- The acer has a 250 gb hard drive, 1.9 GHz, Ati Radeon HD 24000 XT Hyper memory Graphics card, with a amd 64 x2 processor and 2 gb ram 800MHz bus speed. No blue tooth, no N wireless, (G) and a memory card reader, 4 usbs.

The MacBook Pro has a Core 2 duo, 2.13 GHz, 2g ram, ATI,RadeonX1600 ,Bus Speed:667 MHz, Bluetooth, N wireless, no memery card reader, 2 usb.

The Acer is fairly new (9 months) but the mac is more older (2 years)

Should i trade? I will be using the mac for games (Gears of war etc), word documents, photos, and surfing the web.

Can i do what ever i did before on vista on a mac dual booted?

Thanks a lot for looking at my questions and answering, sorry if i gave you the head ache of the century!

09-27-2008, 07:19 PM

1.) Can i boot to vista or only xp.
I don't about that for sure but you could just make the partition 90% for windows only.

2.) Will anything (viruses etc) affect the mac portion if i get it on vista?
No of course not. They are written for windows and will only affect windows.

3.) Will it affect my performance? ( Only vista vs. Mac + Vista)
I run XP (very very rarely) and it is very fast.

4.) Can i use Tune up Utlities (boot/login screen changer) on vista when dual booted?
I can't answer this one as I have no idea what you are talking about.

5.) How much should i Partition? I Will use mac for surfing, e-mail, photos, videos, and use vista for games, documents e-mail and surfing, some music/photos/video.
I have a 160GB for HDD 120GB for mac and 40GB for windows.

As for swapping, I wouldn't for one reason. You have warranty on your PC the Mac doesn't. If it did, I would but warranty is warranty.

09-27-2008, 08:59 PM

Originally Posted by B&O

1.) Can i boot to vista or only xp.
I don't about that for sure but you could just make the partition 90% for windows only.

2.) Will anything (viruses etc) affect the mac portion if i get it on vista?
No of course not. They are written for windows and will only affect windows.

3.) Will it affect my performance? ( Only vista vs. Mac + Vista)
I run XP (very very rarely) and it is very fast.

4.) Can i use Tune up Utlities (boot/login screen changer) on vista when dual booted?
I can't answer this one as I have no idea what you are talking about.

5.) How much should i Partition? I Will use mac for surfing, e-mail, photos, videos, and use vista for games, documents e-mail and surfing, some music/photos/video.
I have a 160GB for HDD 120GB for mac and 40GB for windows.

As for swapping, I wouldn't for one reason. You have warranty on your PC the Mac doesn't. If it did, I would but warranty is warranty.

Ok Thanks, Tune ip utlities is a program that allows you to change your boot screens and login screens to new ones, like customize them, the program is only for windows so will it work? Also I have 1 year warrenty on mac and 2 years on acer. Would you recommend vista or xp, i like vista but not the compatibility part, it just looks nice and some miner features.

09-28-2008, 07:09 AM

I have only used Vista as a beta which is what made me switch to OSX in the first place. I run mine with XP. I only use XP for games which I will be stopping soon as if I need it there is an OSX version. So you have to chose the windows that is best for you.

09-28-2008, 08:35 AM

I run Vista Ultimate and OSX 10.5 on my MacBook Pro with no issues.

Vista runs very well and I use it for my 3DS Max work and gaming which are all pretty intensive.

Don't forget if you want to run newer games in windoze then you need Vista anyway for DX10.

09-28-2008, 10:20 AM

Does directX 10 work with the x1600 video card? I didn't think it did. I would happily upgrade to 4GB RAM and visa for that.