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Question

Is a mac right for me

Feb 27, 2012 6:28AM PST

I am getting a new laptop, I am thinking about getting new macbook pro 15 inch In may I am only upgrading the hard drive and ram anyways I am want to do windows gaming on it dualing booting osx mountain lion (when it comes out) and windows 7 how well would it work with boot camp and or parallels 7 ? I also want to mod, play minecraft and root my phone learn to program and go on the web. Is a macbook pro right for and how well does the 15 inch model run windows games ?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Any laptop is not really suitable for gaming
Feb 27, 2012 7:40AM PST

purposes.
The Graphics tend be be a little lack lustre.

Windows 7 would work well with Boot Camp and if you were going to play games anyway, that would be the way to go.
Parallels are good but not so good for gaming.

All models of Mac run Windows in Boot Camp well.

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(NT) what's the difference between boot camp and parallels
Feb 27, 2012 9:22AM PST
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The difference is;
Feb 27, 2012 9:04PM PST

Boot Camp (which is Free) & Windoows is housed on a separate NTFS partition that is created by the Boot Camp App, on your computers internal hard drive.
Once the partition is created, by the Boot Camp app, you install Windows 7 on it. Must be a full version, not OEM.
Once installed, the Mac is booted from the NTFS partition and Windows launches.
The Mac OS is not used at all. To all intents and purposes, the Mac computer is now a Windows Box.

Parallels is a Virtual Machine that runs under OS X .
Once the Parallels software is installed, a Virtual Hard Drive is created.
Windows, any flavor, is installed onto the Virtual Hard Drive. (This HD looks like an ordinary file on your Mac.
The computer is booted into OS X and, when required, Parallels is launched, followed by Windows.
The computer is now running two Operating Systems at once. Windows and Mac OS X.
Files can be transferred from one to the other by drag and drop.

Boot Camp is fast while Parallels is not so much.

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Answer
mac
Mar 27, 2012 3:22AM PDT

mac is best!

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That really isn't helpful
Mar 27, 2012 10:06AM PDT

That really isn't helpful. There are plenty of ways in which Microsoft has really stepped up their game starting with Vista, and eclipsed Mac OS X. Apple was first with what you could call a truly 3D GUI, but Microsoft went a few steps further with Vista and then a step or two beyond that with 7, meanwhile Mac OS X has pretty much languished. The last major GUI feature ever added was Expose back in 10.3, and most people probably aren't even aware of it. To the best of my knowledge, Mac OS X has no universal API along the lines of DXVA which allows programs like VLC Player or QuickTime to offload the video decoding work onto the GPU. Some programs may have their own custom system for doing this, but it's not baked into the OS like it is Windows.

For some people, that kind of thing doesn't matter, and so you need to say a little bit more than something is best.