1. You don't game with trackpad.
2. Apple's trackpad are typically 2 to 3 times the size of wintel laptop trackpads. Which means trackpad is more accurate on Macs.
That makes absolutely zero sense. The size of the trackpad has nothing to do with the accuracy of the trackpad under windows or Apple's capability to write drivers for it. People need to seriously stop making excuses for Apple.
The truth of the matter is that while you can run windows on a Macbook Pro, the experience is less than ideal. I find it hard to believe that a company like Apple can't write a driver for their trackpad. It's absolutely horrendous using the trackpad under windows. Often times I have to click 3-4 times for a click to register.
Also, the keyboard light does NOT turn off under windows, it will always be on at the lowest setting. It's not a huge deal but really, why is it so hard to have the keyboard light turn off?
The computer also gets VERY hot under windows. I haven't tested battery life but I can't imagine its very good with all the heat coming off of this thing.
Another issue is the wireless card interfering with the sound card. Windows Vista checks for wireless networks every 60 seconds or so, so every 60 seconds you get a lag spike (terrible if you're online playing games) and you always get sound crackling through speakers or headphones thats very annoying whenever your listening to anything whether it be a movie, playing a video game, or simply listening to music. Using a program called Vista Anti Lag seems to resolve this for the most part. I have windows Vista on my cheap Toshiba laptop and I get no such issue. From what I found out, it happens to several Vista users that have poorly written drivers for their wireless cards. It may be that these are users that upgraded to Vista and manufacturers of their wireless cards never bothered to properly update the drivers but I'm speculating. All I can say for sure is that the four windows machines I've used, 3 laptops and one desktop have had no such issue but they were built with Vista pre-installed from the manufacturer. The exception of course is the Macbook Pro.
Another big issue which I think is related to the erratic trackpad behavior, but still not sure, is being unable to type properly. If I'm typing anything, all of a sudden my mouse cursor will jump, highlight something else and I'll consequently type over it or delete an entire paragraph. I hit "control z" to undo it but its highly annoying. I think this happens if you have "tap to click" enabled. My palm maybe rubs against the trackpad and registers it as a click or something. I can't reproduce this when I rub my palm on the trackpad though but the trackpad drivers under window are more erratic than a drunken britney spears. I disabled "tap to click" so I'll have to see if I can type on it now.
Another issue is that VMware runs slow under OS X. I have a new unibody macbook pro with 2gb of ram. I'm trying to run Word and Powerpoint along with Chem Sketch and while it does run it is "laggy". I was hoping it would be smooth but its not. Don't get me wrong, it'll get the job done but it won't be smooth.
I'm really enjoying OS X and I love a lot of the features it has that windows doesn't. For example, I like how you can maximize safari to the optimal width by hitting the "+" button. Whereas windows it just fills the entire screen needlessly.
Even so I'm somewhat regretting my Macbook Pro purchase. It's an amazing machine but I bought this with the expectation that "boot-camp" would make Windows Vista work at least as well as on my cheap Toshiba laptop. Some of the issues I described have been going on for months, since last generations macbook pro. And Apple has just shrugged their shoulders.
I'm starting a masters program in January that consists of online classes and some software will be windows only but its supposed to run under vmware. I don't know what the software is but if its real intensive its going to be laggy I bet. I'm pretty sure teachers will want everything as a word/powerpoint/excel file so unless I want to buy office again I'll have to use windows or deal with the slowdown in fusion. They should accept files as pdf's but perhaps they want to make corrections and will want the word document format. They have also notified us that a website we'll be using is not supported under Safari. Of course if I want to watch a blu-ray movie or play a video game, those are really windows activities so its back to windows.
Anyways, the short is that Mac OS X is really amazing, but personally I'm feeling the pinch a bit as far as what I want to do. The Macbook Pro is an amazing machine and the screen is absolutely beautiful. The screen on the Macbook Air is also very nice, but the screens on the Macbook's are complete trash when compared to ANY similar sized windows notebook at almost any price point.
If you do decide to go Mac, know that windows will run on it but it won't run as well as a machine that was made just for windows. And the reason is simply that Apple doesn't have enough interest to get the drivers working correctly. Hardware wise the Macbook Pro is amazing along with OS X.
