so i think i'm gonna have to use windows for class. i went ahead and installed vista via bootcamp on my mpb, and it barely made it thru my 2 hour class. and i mean barely, even with the settings on as low as possible and trying not to do much on it.
based on my previous acer experience, vista should be fine.
my 4400mah acer battery lasts 2 hrs for vista, 2 hours for ubuntu as well.
since MBP's battery is bigger, it should be definitely above 2 hours, if everything is right.
however, to take advantage of all the system power conserving tech (such as cpu clock slowing down, we all know in MBP, most of the time cpu is running at half of top clock speed), proper drivers need to be installed.
Im not really sure your situation tho, I can only say for the hardware and battery, vista should definitely last more than 2 hours.
edit: slashdot has this article http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/04/1754220&from=rss
some comments indicate apple's driver doesn't offer step speed of cpu for vista, thus the cpu is running at full speed all the time, which is obviously a big power drainer.
maybe thats why vista runs on Mac faster? lol
also, had my first crash today as well. i was trying to unzip a fairly large file (900 MB unzipped), and it finally did it, and then it froze.
i had just installed Vista Business today. and first crash today. i guess windows is still where i left it in 2005
don't know, never tried 900MB zip, largest I got was 800MB HoMM3 complete, sorry I got from bt since no retail version was avaiable in the stats at all at that time. Vista handled that one pretty good.
if your vista keeps having this problem, mmmm.... maybe try doing it in osx, since they all support zip files.
Oh, i remembered when I use windows, 7zip (free) is the compressor of the choice, it works nicely, and compresses files generally 25% smaller than rar and zip. you might like it.
Thats because vista can handle its power right the software is horrobile i think it is the worst microsoft os release