Vista Runs Hot on Macbook Pro

PetManimal writes "Ken Mingis, Computerworld's Mac editor, has given Vista a spin on his Macbook Pro in order to review and compare hardware performance with OS X. It's not a rigorous benchmarking, but he does notice a few issues relating to power consumption: 'Since installing Vista, I have found that my MacBook Pro runs hot. No doubt Microsoft hasn't worked on power management issues that might affect Apple hardware, which leaves me to wonder whether I'm slowly cooking the motherboard of my laptop. It's not hot enough to fry an egg on the aluminum case, but my laptop is noticeably warmer than when I use Mac OS X. I've also noticed that battery life is substantially reduced. Once again, energy management for Apple hardware is not likely at the top of Microsoft's list. Once Apple writes updated drivers to work with Vista, I'd expect these issues to be addressed.'"

this isn't exactly new

[thegoogler]

windows 2000 even always ran hotter than any other OS on my laptops, i remember hearing an explanation a long time ago that they ignore the "wait" cycles or somesuch running the cpu harder than intended.

I concur

[rajafarian]

Windows.* runs hot

Windows runs one or two degrees Celsius hotter on my workstation, (AMD XP-M @ 2.3 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 6600GT) than Linux. {Temperature read off GKrellm in Linux vs nVidia system monitor in Windows.}

My guess was that Windows' System Idle Process was using CPU cycles even when nothing else was but I stopped caring since I spend so little time in Windows anyway.

Windows Drains Battery?

[aitikin]

Everyone I know who has a windows laptop of any form has always found that the battery drains quickly. Granted I don't know too many people who condition their batteries properly or anything of the sort, but it kind of leads me to believe that Windows doesn't do a whole lot with power management over all.

Re:Better than an almost year old Sony

[Sillygates]

This guy compared a dual core apple to a single core vaio. Thats hardly a fair representation of a high end PC vs apple benchmark.

Also, acording to a few reports, the MacBook has an underclocked gpu [reghardware.co.uk] (possibly to reduce heat), so it may not be able to even match a similarly loaded machine, at least when it comes to directX/OpenGL, Vista's territory.

Re:Better Take Away Message. Hot was predicted.

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter, please read this carefully. Following this advice will make Slashdot a better place for everyone, including yourself.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
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• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy [ibiblio.org]

Re:I concur

[EvanED]

It lets the system deal with spare cycles without a special case. Add it as the lowest priority and it will always be in the runnable queue (or running). You don't have to do something special in the scheduler function like if(there are no runnable processes) do nothing for a while and try again }.

Re:Runs hot on my DELL too!

[Daltorak]

One of my degrees is in comp sci. I've taken a GUI design theory classes. It took me > 3 minutes to figure out how to add something to the new start menu (right click, create shortcut isn't there... explore (all) user(s) and I don't have permission to write. I can't drag a shortcut in... hmmm)

I really want to make a snarky comment about how comp-sci majors tend to know jack shit about user interface design, while also thinking that they know *everything* about computers because they have a comp sci degree.... but, ehhh, I'll digress. But I will say this: If you don't understand how to use Vista, RTFM. The help system in Vista works pretty well, just type in a question and it'll give you some answers.

On to your nits:

Battery:
Have you checked to see what power plan the computer is running on? There are three plans that ship with Vista by default: High performance, Power saver, and Balanced. Click the battery icon to see which one you've chosen, or to change it. Personally I've found that my laptop runs -significantly- cooler on Balanced and Power saver than it does on High performance. This is because Windows will throttle the CPU, reduce power to the wireless network card, prevent the content indexer from running, and so on. You can make your own plans, too.

Aero (with transparency disabled) doesn't use significantly more battery power than having it turned off. It offloads some work to the GPU, yes, but it's work that would otherwise be done by the CPU. You should get a much better understanding of what the Desktop Window Manager does (and doesn't do) before committing yourself to a claim along the lines of "Aero halves battery power".

Networking:
Vista has the notion of "Public" networks and "Private" networks. Private networks are generally trustworthy, and public ones aren't. When you configure a new connection (wireless, VPN, dial-up, or wired... ad-hoc or infrastructured... ipv4 or ipv6... doesn't matter), it gives you the opportunity to choose between two types of private networks (Home and Work), and a Public network. There are two kinds of private networks because a great many people have laptops that they shuttle between work and home.

That's one of the major differences in networking between XP and Vista: Vista understands the concept of "Locations", and it will automatically reconfigure your firewall / sharing / discovery settings to suit the network you're on. Once it's been configured, you don't have to do anything other than connect to the network. You can make as many locations as you like, too... multiple workplaces, multiple wireless networks, etc.

This totally blows away anything XP has, and is a solid step up from what OS X Tiger offers (and believe me, I've done a lot of commuting with Panther & Tiger over the last few years, so I know what's what).

Start menu:
If you want to add a shortcut to the start menu, right-click on it and choose "Pin to start menu". Or, drag the icon onto the start button. Or, right-click the start button, choose "Open", and you can work with it as an Explorer folder. None of this has changed from Windows XP.

The "All users" is only writable by administrators, yes -- but that's logical because you don't want one standard user being able to change what's on the Start menu of other standard users, right? If you want to share files between users, use the Public folder and its many children.

Re:I concur

[be-fan]

The idle-process is just an organizational thing. Even if you have no code to run, you still have to tell the CPU to do something, and the system idle process is a way of taking that special-case code out of the scheduler. These days, the system idle process just executes HLT instructions, which pause the CPU until the next interrupt.

Re:Wow

[toddestan]

So, why does the entire submission revolve around the ONE item that likely won't be news, and indeed will be completely moot, by the time Vista ships and Apple actually supports Boot Camp as a product (when Leopard ships)?

Actually, he should of just written "Macbook runs hot when pushed hard". Vista hogs system resources, which means that the CPU/GPU/HDD have to work harder, which means they use more power and generate more heat. It's about as insightful as saying "Macbook battery life suffers when encoding video". Well, duh.

Atleast the Macbook doesn't seem to randomly shut off, like my P4-M Toshiba does if I run it at 100% CPU for extended periods of time.

Re:Better than an almost year old Sony

[feanor512]

I can confirm that. The X1600 Pro in the MBP 15" in Windows XP runs at 310/290 instead of the ATI default 475/475. I have no way of testing it in OS X though. It is unstable at 475/475 which leads me to believe that Apple has undervolted it. Also, it runs at about 400/400 in the 20" iMac.

Re:Wow

[kalidasa]

Precisely. Microsoft doesn't care if you buy a copy of Vista and a copy of Office to run on your Mac, and Apple doesn't care if you buy your Mac to run Vista and office. Microsoft does care if you buy a Mac to run OS X without Office, and Apple does care if you buy an OS X disk to run on your Dell (because Apple's main profit margin is in the hardware). So I can see no reason whatsoever why Microsoft would cripple Vista from running on the Mac - it's another $300 for them, and no OEM discount!

Re:Wow

[SillyNickName4me]

Are you fucking retarded? Seriously.

Are you fucking uncapable of making a normal argument?

Microsoft fucking with OS/2's "run Windows apps without buying Windows" and Microsoft fucking with "buy a copy of Windows to run on your Mac" are two completely different things.

And the issue here is that you are lacking some rather important knowledge.

1. Microsoft did get payed for a Winows license for every copy of OS/2 that included this support out of the box

2. There existed a cheaper OS/2 for Windows version which required a Microsoft Windows 3.1 version from Microsoft.

2. is completely comparable to the situation we are talking about, and in case of 1. they were being compensated for the OS and could sell their applications.

So lets see, I wont call you retarded, ignorant hits it better.