01-26-2008, 08:45 AM

I want to buy one of those new Santa Rosa MBPs. I wanted a 15" one with a 2.4GHz Processor. I also wanted Vista preinstalled. I found this link: link
It looked normal to me, but I noticed it said Boot Camp 1.4. Isn't Leopard supposed to have Boot Camp 2? Is this just a Tiger notebook upgraded to Leopard and they forgot to upgrade Boot Camp?

Thanks in advance

01-26-2008, 08:48 AM

Also, I am a student, and I could buy a notebook from apple for less, and I have Windows XP Pro w/ a key and a Windows Vista Business upgrade w/o a key.
Can you upgrade your windows installation once you've installed one windows OS?

01-26-2008, 11:01 AM

if you want to run windows you probably shouldn't be looking to a Mac. Just go with a PC.

P.S. Sorry im a mac noob myself, i cant relay answer you questions about boot camp.

01-26-2008, 11:16 AM

Originally Posted by john_s

I want to buy one of those new Santa Rosa MBPs. I wanted a 15" one with a 2.4GHz Processor. I also wanted Vista preinstalled. I found this link: http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/...-MacBook%20Pro
It looked normal to me, but I noticed it said Boot Camp 1.4. Isn't Leopard supposed to have Boot Camp 2? Is this just a Tiger notebook upgraded to Leopard and they forgot to upgrade Boot Camp?

Thanks in advance

You can't "forget" to upgrade Boot Camp along with Leopard. That's the correct version... there is no Boot Camp 2.0. The one for Tiger was a beta.

01-26-2008, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by john_s

Also, I am a student, and I could buy a notebook from apple for less, and I have Windows XP Pro w/ a key and a Windows Vista Business upgrade w/o a key.
Can you upgrade your windows installation once you've installed one windows OS?

Does your Windows XP install disc have Service Pack 2 pre-patched to it? If not.. then you can't even use it, unfortunately. Well then again... you should be able to install your Vista upgrade without installing XP first. The Vista installer should just ask you to insert your licensed XP disc first to verify you qualify for the upgrade. It has always worked that way in the past.

01-26-2008, 11:28 AM

The boot camp with leopard is Version 2.0, if that helps

01-26-2008, 12:37 PM

Thank you lifeisabeach. your first post proved to be very helpful!
I don't have xp with sp2 prepatched to it.

I will probably just buy an MBP from that link
Thanks again!

PS. Do you think the MBP link in the original post will have an account setup?
How else could they use boot camp? I hope they don't, unless they use
some authorized reseller way.

Is there any way to resize the partitions once they are created for the two different operating systems?

01-26-2008, 08:07 PM

Originally Posted by john_s

PS. Do you think the MBP link in the original post will have an account setup?
How else could they use boot camp? I hope they don't, unless they use
some authorized reseller way.

I don't really know. They may have some sort of OEM solution that requires just copying a full image over. I imagine if they had to set up an account and install Vista manually for each computer sold, that'd get a bit tedious and hardly cost-effective. But who knows... if there is a user account already set up, merely deleting it should be fine.

Is there any way to resize the partitions once they are created for the two different operating systems?

You'll need a 3rd-party utility since Disk Utility, which comes with OS X, can't write or format NTFS partitions (and you SHOULD be using NTFS for Windows, not FAT32, for various reasons). My normal recommendation would be to use iPartition for OS X, but they don't recommend using it with Leopard at the moment due to some OS incompatibility. Hopefully that will be resolved with the pending update to Leopard though. You'll have to resort to a Windows partition manager for now.

01-26-2008, 08:22 PM

Originally Posted by lifeisabeach

You'll need a 3rd-party utility since Disk Utility, which comes with OS X, can't write or format NTFS partitions (and you SHOULD be using NTFS for Windows, not FAT32, for various reasons). My normal recommendation would be to use iPartition for OS X, but they don't recommend using it with Leopard at the moment due to some OS incompatibility. Hopefully that will be resolved with the pending update to Leopard though. You'll have to resort to a Windows partition manager for now.

I wasn't aware of that limitation with Disk Utility. One learns something new everyday on this forum. I'm glad I didn't do a reinstall of the OS to partition the HD.

Re: iPartition, they now seem to have a version that works with Leopard. Their web site recently changed to stating so:

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/general-faq.php#leopard

My only concern is whether this "workaround", as they call it, will still be optimal for when Apple releases version 10.5.2 of Leopard that addresses the so-called "bug".

I've got an email inquiry in to iPartition to find out. I'm also asking them if they will be offering free updates if I buy the current version, and they release an update designed particularly for 10.5.2. I'll share the response once I hear back from them.

01-27-2008, 07:23 AM

Originally Posted by EORI

Re: iPartition, they now seem to have a version that works with Leopard. Their web site recently changed to stating so:

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/general-faq.php#leopard

My only concern is whether this "workaround", as they call it, will still be optimal for when Apple releases version 10.5.2 of Leopard that addresses the so-called "bug".

I've got an email inquiry in to iPartition to find out. I'm also asking them if they will be offering free updates if I buy the current version, and they release an update designed particularly for 10.5.2. I'll share the response once I hear back from them.

Thanx for pointing out the update. It must have come out in the past week or so. As for 10.5.2... I certainly would avoid using this or any system utility until it has been certified for compatibility with the update. 10.5.2 has a HUGE list of bug fixes and weighs over 400 mb last I read! Coriolis does offer free updates. I first paid for iDefrag back for OS 10.3 and have yet to have to pay for any updates since. I don't know if that's wholly indefinitely though.

01-27-2008, 08:37 AM

I assume that the two partitions, logically, will each be 80GB.
I would like the mac partition to be 80 gb, but would like a 10gb
swap space, with 70gb for windows. Could I use a windows disk formatting
utility (norton partitionmagic)? I have been a long-time customer of
windows and have bought partitionmagic and know how to use it

01-27-2008, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by john_s

I assume that the two partitions, logically, will each be 80GB.
I would like the mac partition to be 80 gb, but would like a 10gb
swap space, with 70gb for windows. Could I use a windows disk formatting
utility (norton partitionmagic)? I have been a long-time customer of
windows and have bought partitionmagic and know how to use it

I'd check with them to be sure, but you should be able to. I wouldn't do a dedicated swap partition though... that will actually make your hard drive work harder since the head MUST travel a relatively considerable distance to write data back and forth. In fact... a moderately fragmented swap file intermingled among the other files in a moderately fragmented system drive is probably an optimal scenario.

01-27-2008, 04:40 PM

I don't understand what you mean by a moderately fragmented swap file. Windows can't write to HFS+ and Mac cannot write to NTFS. Why not a swap partition? Will it really damage the hard drive?

Thanks

01-27-2008, 11:18 PM

Originally Posted by john_s

I don't understand what you mean by a moderately fragmented swap file. Windows can't write to HFS+ and Mac cannot write to NTFS. Why not a swap partition? Will it really damage the hard drive?

Thanks

I don't understand what you don't understand. What does Windows not writing to HFS and OS X not writing to NTFS have anything to do with a swap partition? Maybe I misunderstood what you meant by a "swap partition"... what do you mean? I'm assuming you wanted to put your Windows swap file on a dedicated partition by itself.

01-28-2008, 02:30 PM

I got back a response today from Coriolis re: compatibility and future upgrades for iPartition. Here it is for those interested:

Q: I am very interested in purchasing iPartition. However, I have been hesitant to do so because of an incompatibility problem with Leopard
10.5.1. I see that you now have a workaround for the bug in 10.5.1. An
earlier FAQ indicated that there would be a performance impact to
using this workaround. Just how bad is the impact?

A: It really depends on the system. I haven't measured the read/write performance for ages now, but I remember the difference between reading 64KB at a time and reading 16MB at a time was fairly significant. It's difficult to generalise though; if I had to guess, I'd say that for modern systems it's probably of the order of 5-10%, which in the worst case could make a difference of as much as 40 minutes or so to the run-time. Usually it would have less impact than that (it depends on the layout of files on the disk, amongst other things).

Q: Also, once Apple issues the much anticipated 10.5.2 in the coming
weeks, I presume the bug will have been resolved.

A: I strongly suspect that we'll have to wait until 10.5.3, actually. But as the
e-mail I sent around earlier said, we don't have any official information.

Q: However, I don't want to have to buy another upgrade of iPartition that
performs better with 10.5.2 without the bug problem.

A: You wouldn't have to. We use the usual scheme for version numbering, hereby you only pay for upgrades when the *first* number changes (i.e. an upgrade from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 or even 3.9.12 would be free; an upgrade from 3.0.1 to 4.0.0 would be chargeable). I'm always surprised by how often we're asked this kind of question, since AFAIK just about everyone does things this way :-)

Q: Are you planning on providing current purchasers of iPartition with a free upgrade in that instance?

A: In case the previous answer didn't make it clear enough, yes, we are.