Windows 7 natively on MacBook Pro

[janalgo88]

Hello,

I have MacBook Pro 2.5GHz, Early 2008 model. I?m curious whether Windows 7 will work as it should natively on this machine?that is, without Boot Camp and completely erased harddrive and preformatted to NTFS file system.

I am aware that Boot Camp drivers are currently outdated and Apple is planning on releasing updated ones for W7.

I know this sounds like nonsense to OSX us:)s :), but I?ve heard great things about W7 (even tried Beta version and liked it), and since I?m coming from Windows world, there is just some software that works better there for me than here on OSX. And I?m always trying to do something "Windows way" which to me makes more sense. Not to say that OSX doesn?t have some great features (there are a lot of them!). And MacBook Pro is simply "the" best laptop there is and it would be shame to sell this great piece of hardware. Apple sure makes great, beautiful hardware.

Has anyone tried this? Or even with Boot Camp? Are there any issues with heating, performace, battery life, ? which could very possibly be resolved with updated drivers?

Thanks.

[DrCheese]

Battery life is quite a lot lower under Windows than OSX http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3582 Not sure it can be fixed with new drivers.

[Julius Caro]

Install it and dont install bootcamp drivers if you dont want. Either way it's still native

[Guest]

It will run without Mac OS X installed, but if Apple release a firmware update for the machine, it usually only comes in Mac OS X format, and therefore you won't be able to update it with Windows. You may want to keep a small partition with OS X on it for something like this :). Also, battery life isn't as good as it is under Mac OS X. I also believe they run a bit hotter under Windows.

[Litespeed]

It should install natively without any problems. You may notice quicker battery drain and higher temps though - at least that's what happened with my wife's MacBook.

[AltecXP]

Boot off DVD, erase drive, install Win7, then install bootcamp drivers and you will have a fully win 7 machine.

[witalit]

Ive dual booted just incase I need win 7 for something. Other than that its gonna be OSX!