Hands on: Running Vista on a MacBook Pro

Using the "Windows Experience Index," which is included with Vista and designed to give computer users a sense of how well their hardware runs the new operating system's "Aero" GUI, my Vaio scored a 3.6 (out of a possible score of 5). The lowest measure was for gaming graphics. Good thing I'm not a gamer.

My MacBook Pro features a 2.16-GHz dual-core Core Duo processor, a 7,200-rpm hard drive, 2GB of RAM and 256MB of dedicated video RAM. Using the Windows Experience Index, I found that the MacBook Pro got a score of 4.7, no doubt aided by the dual-core chip and better ATI video card. (Gaming graphics, for example, were rated at 4.7 on the MacBook Pro.)

In short, if you have a MacBook Pro, you're ready for Vista. Whether you actually want to install it will be up to you.

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Getting Vista RC1 up and running was relatively painless. After installing Boot Camp and creating a 20GB partition on my MacBook Pro's hard drive, I slipped in the Vista installation disk and pretty much let it install as I had on my Vaio. After that was done, I ejected the Vista disk and inserted the disk containing Mac drivers. Here's where I ran into some problems: The drivers failed to install. I'm not surprised, given that Apple provides drivers only for Windows XP Service Pack 2, but I figured I'd try anyway.

What this means is that Apple's traditional replacement for Windows' right-click (Crtl-click) doesn't work. I had to install a separate program -- Apple Mouse -- to successfully add that function. Adding Apple Mouse to the start-up folder means the small application starts up every time Vista does, so I have right-click functionality when I need it.

The failed Mac drivers installation also means I am unable to eject disks from the SuperDrive using the eject key on the MacBook Pro keyboard (though you can still do so using a menu in Vista). And no "start-up disk" control panel -- used to switch back and forth between operating systems on my MacBook Pro -- is installed. That control panel, which works as billed in XP, mimics Apple's Start-up disk system preference, allowing you to choose which operating system to boot into. The result: If I want to use Mac OS X, I have to restart the computer, hold down the option key and then select OS X. It's a little clunky, but it works.