First impressions: installing Vista on the Macbook

As per the Twitter note I had up, I got a Macbook the other day. I've been planning to get a Mac at some point and decided recently that I really needed to have a personal laptop. Not wanting to get caught buying the new fancy gadget right before it becomes obsolete, I opted for a Macbook instead of the Macbook Pro. I found a decent deal on Craigslist on a new Macbook (gotta love the Internet.. it was still in its box, untouched) and picked it up yesterday.

So, today I embarked upon installing Vista on it.

Surprise, it was freaking easy! Yes, I'm a Microsoft fan and I own a bunch of Apple stock, but I was shocked at how easy it was. Most of the time was spent downloading/letting files load. Basically, the process went like this:

• Download Bootcamp
• Run Bootcamp
• Burn a cd with Windows drivers
• Install Vista
• Install the Windows drivers
• Set up your network connection and watch Vista automatically identify problems and update drivers etc

Now, for those of you who don't even like to install software and are overwhelmed by the personal computing experience - ok, fine, it's not that easy. But really, as far as installing and running two highly complicated Operating Systems on the same laptop goes, this was about as smooth as I can imagine. As I'm typing this, I'm working in Vista, listening to Yahoo! Music Jukebox while blogging in Windows Live Writer, on a Mac. Only a few hours removed from undertaking the installation process. That's pretty damned cool.

I'm sure I'll discover some funky stuff as I play with this and maybe I'll put up a follow-up post, but the only annoying thing that I ran into was that I set up my partition for Windows to be too small (the dialogue boxes when making these choices could certainly be better). It looks like the only way to fix that is to clear the Windows partition and start over. But given how easy this install process was, I know that's basically 20 minutes of my time so I'm fine with it. If I discovered this much further down the line (after I'd really installed a bunch of apps, stored a lot of data) I'd probably be pretty damn peeved.

Here's a suggestion, if anyone from Apple is listening: you folks should fix those dialogue boxes and perhaps, see if you can make the partitions adjustable. The former is pretty easy to do folks.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Vista on a Macbook, Apple Bootcamp, Windows Vista, Bootcamp partition too small

Comments

[Jimbo]

Interesting ... please continue to update this post for at least a few weeks as you get Office/etc installed.

[Ben Hoyt]

There is just something twisted and uncomfortable about the idea of running Vista on a Mac. I feel....dirty...

[Jimbo]

Totally - like bringing your mistress home to meet your wife. I mean ... if one were to have a mist... uh ... never mind.

BTW - I really found the full video of Gates/Jobs interesting. It was almost as if you thought one was going to throw a sucker punch at times :) Maybe that was just wishful thinking!