How does Windows fry macs? I just installed XP on a new Macbook with bootcamp. You're making me paranoid. Everything is running fine though. Also, is Windows taxing the computer on a mac more than on a PC?
I was minutes from buying a unibody MBP 17" to use with Windows 7 and OS X (in that order), when I started reading reports all over the web about Windows turning unibody MB's and MBP's into furnaces. Apparently, BootCamp doesn't handle fan control under Windows, and when there's no fan control driver, Windows defaults to 1000 RPM, no matter if you're just surfing casually or playing some insanely CPU and GPU intensive 3D game. As a result, Vista bleeds the battery on an MBP dry in 2 hours tops, the machine gets smoking hot, and some people have even reported weird video artifacts resulting from the GPU getting so hot it starts, um, 'hallucinating'. If Apple wants to avoid repairing half the unibody machine park within a year, they better get their sh** together and release a BootCamp 3.0 with proper fan control, or stop advertising Windows compatibility altogether.
If you google fan control + boot camp, you'll find that this has been a problem forever, some of those posts date back to 2006. As for XP, well, unless you're playing heavy duty games it really shouldn't generate any heat at all. XP is 8 years old, it was written when a Pentium III 500 MHz was a decent computer so it wouldn't know what to do with a Core2Duo powerhouse. It makes zero use of video hardware, other than to render basic desktop graphics using an ancient method that predates OpenGL, DirectX and all that stuff.
Windows on Macs runs quite a bit hotter than OS X. It's normally only noticed running games etc.
Well, games are supposed to generate a lot of heat really. If you crank up CPU and GPU usage to an average of 80-90%, whereas during normal usage it's chugging along in the 10-20% ballpark, it doesn't matter if it's Windows, OS X or Sony Playstation, the device will get h-o-t. But these heat problems people are talking about seem to occur by merely booting up Vista and doing some lightweight surfing, which is ridiculous. I don't get any fan noise (or noticable heat) on my Vista notebook until I make it do something a little heavier, like playing a HD video.