MacBook Pro, Core Duo - Dual Boot Editing?
 

Anyone using a MacBook Pro with the core duo processor? I'm thinking of buying one and setting up a dual boot with Win XP, so I can use FCP, and use Premiere Pro 2.0 on the Windows side for those projects (I'm thinking specifically HDV stuff with my HD100, to avoid the hideous workaround). The specs on the one I'm considering are the 17" screen, 2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 100 GB 7200 RPM HD, 8X SuperDrive.

Is anyone doing a dual boot similar to what I'm thinking about here, with the core duo processor specifically? I'm interesting in knowing how well a setup like that will work, if the dual boot causes any stability issues for the OSes, and if it's set up like a normal Windows dual boot.

Thanks mucho!

Hey Keith! Have a look at this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=68282

Thanks, Boyd! That answered many of my questions. I'd like some more feedback from other users, if possible, to get a broader sense of how well this all works...

Hi Keith,

I am an early adopter of the MBP (15" 2.0Ghz, 2Gb ram, 100Gb 7200 hdd) and bought it specifically to run FCP in a mobile environment. I shoot HDV 720p30 and it handles that just fine. It has bested my dual 2.5 G5 tower in almost every test. There is a lot to like here, but mobility was the prime concern.

Stability has been exceptional. I've had no cross partion corruptions, despite the occasional lock-up/force reboot (these things happen...). Seems pretty solid on both sides.

I haven't tried any editing software on the Windows side, but would expect it do as well as any comparably equiped Windows only machine. It is, after all, Intel Inside. There are a lot of quirks (minor) to get Windows to behave like Windows. The big things are getting the clock to read the right time, and the keyboard/mouse to be fully functional. After you pass those small hurdles, all of my Windows software behaves exactly as you would expect, and at a speed that will make you happy.

The only hassle with boot camp is actually the reboot to get to the other OS. It's not like having two machines, but one machine that does either. Since my only need of Windows anymore is my financial software, and a few device control programs, I think I am moving over to the Parallels software so I can use Windows and OSX at the same time.

Yo Keith, I'm running an iMac with bootcamp and XP and it seems to work fine, after effects runs nice and quick in windows where as in OS X it's not the greatest because it is runninge under emulation not native. I think that boot camp will offer better performance I read somewhere that parallels is 90% the speed of boot camp. Since you said you'll be doing some editing in windows then I assume you'll be spending some good chunks of time there so the reboot shoudln't hurt you too much. A couple things to be aware of is that depending on how you format your XP partition OS X will be able to read and write to it or just read it, while windows will not see your mac drive at all. There is a utility called macdrive which will allow XP to see the mac but the only risk to that (hypothetical of course) would be if you get a windows virus that goes crazy deleting all your data if you don't have macdrive the virus couldn't see your mac data but with macdrive installed your data *could* be at risk. Of course no more at risk than any other computer running XP ;-)

Nate, Greg, thanks for your responses. They're exactly what I needed! I think you've convinced me to get one. Once I've used it a bit, I'll give some feedback on how it works as a Mac/Windows editing machine.

Keith

I am running a mbp 17" 2.13 ghz dual intel w/2 gb ram and 7200 rpm 100 gb hard drive. I am running final cut studio, and dv rack and ultra on the windows xp side. To be honest with you, my mbp runs windows better than my fry's built pc with 64 bit athlon dual core 4.44 ghz processor. I record with an hd 100 into dvrack, reboot the computer into os x and capture with mpeg streamclip right off the same hard drive. Because osx can read ntfs formatted windows files, I just convert m2t's to another mac formatted hard drive. I love the combination, and so far everything works the way I want it to. I did have to get a lacie firewire 800 external drive, bus powered to capture from dv rack. My Western Digital "My Book" firewire drive, when formatted ntfs, would not show up in osx. No problem w/the lacie. And I love the bus powered hard drive. :)