Macbook Pro i5 or i7 for Vegas Pro?

[Al Bergstein]

My experience with Bootcamp on Mac Book Pro was less than stellar. While the machine runs WIndows fast, the GPU heated up unacceptably, way worse than under Windows 7 on a normal Windows based laptop, (it did not heat up in a similar fashion when I rebooted into Mac OSX) and I had more than my share of blue screens of death, I assumed due to the crashes were BIOS related (meaning BC related) and which I have not had with either W7 on an HP desktop or a Samsung laptop.

My personal experience leads me to believe that Bootcamp is a less than acceptable way of running high end Windows softare, like Vegas. I opted to buy a Samsung R580 for the purpose.

I also have a Mac Pro kitted out with the a vast array of hard disks and a MacBook Pro so I’m not anti-Apple. I run FCP on the MacPro just fine, I use it for collaborative work that requires FCP, and would suggest that you won’t be happy with the performance of FCP on a MBP. I don’t run it on my MBP because of performance. My personal experience is that Vegas is 90% of FCP and unless you (meaning I) need that 10% I’d rather be editing on a native W7 machine with Vegas. Heck, just being able to do cross fades in Vegas is worth my time alone!

Best of luck either way! Maybe if you go the Bootcamp route you would buy Parallels or something like it and run Vegas that way???

If you do go BC, then please let us know how things go. There are many people wanting to do this, and would like to see if the latest and greatest BC actually makes a Mac a W7 machine worth using.

Alf

[Albert Frantz]

Alf,

Thanks for your helpful reply. If I decide on the 15″ MBP the goal would be to replace my desktop, even though the MBP isn’t quite as powerful (though the video card is more so). The only thing I’d need a separate Windows partition for would be Vegas; everything else would either be done in OS X or (if necessary) in a Windows virtual machine. I’d be shocked (but very happy) if the machine could handle Vegas with HD streams in Parallels. I run an XP VM in an Ubuntu Linux host using VirtualBox, which is great for most tasks, though I need to keep a dedicated XP partition for audio and video.

I might just keep the desktop, save 600 bucks and get the 13″ MBP, *not* install Boot Camp, and use it for everything except video! It would be fine for most audio-only tasks for instance, especially since most audio software still isn’t optimized for quad core.

Many thanks,

Albert

[Bruce Quayle]

Hey Albert,
Just something to remember – Vegas does not use the graphics card in the computer. Speed is purely processor related. This is something I have been griping about for some time as so many high-end laptops come with a decent graphics card these days, it’s crazy not to be able to make use of that extra processing power. But alas, Vegas does not function this way at this time. So when deciding what computer you’re going to use, try and get the fastest processor you can afford.
Cheers,

Bruce Quayle

[Albert Frantz]

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your input. I’m now leaning towards the 13″. It’s smaller, lighter, much cheaper, and is perfectly fine for all tasks (including audio production) save for HD video. I wouldn’t need the better graphics card, and best of all (except for Parallels) I could avoid installing Windows!

Many thanks,

Albert