MacBook Windows Experience Index
Posted Feb 2, 2007 at 10:37 AM
I have successfully installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my MacBook this week, using Apple’s Boot Camp beta to partition my 120GB drive into two 60GB drives: one for OS X, and one for Windows Vista Ultimate. I’m extremely pleased with the results. Note that I have a first generation MacBook — I’m sure the results are slightly better on the latest Intel Core 2 Duo models.
Vista is simply beautiful on this hardware!
Windows Experience Index
After exploring Vista for a while, I came across the Windows Experience Index.
From Windows Vista help:
The Windows Experience Index measures the capability of your computer’s hardware and software configuration and expresses this measurement as a number called a base score. A higher base score generally means that your computer will perform better and faster than a computer with a lower base score, especially when performing more advanced and resource-intensive tasks. Each hardware component receives an individual sub-score. Your computer’s base score is determined by the lowest sub-score. For example, if the lowest sub-score of an individual hardware component is 2.6, then the base score is 2.6. The base score is not an average of the combined sub-scores. You can use the base score to confidently buy programs and other software that are matched to your computer’s base score. For example, if your computer has a base score of 3.3, then you can confidently purchase any software designed for this version of Windows that requires a computer with a base score of 3 or lower.
How my MacBook scores
| Component | What is rated | Sub-score |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Calculations per second | 4.7 |
| Memory (RAM) | Memory operations per second | 4.9 |
| Graphics | Desktop performance for Windows Aero | 3.3 |
| Gaming graphics | 3D business gaming and graphics performance | 3.1 |
| Primary hard disk | Disk data transfer rate | 4.3 |
So my MacBook has a Windows Experience Index base score of 3.1, and seems to be working wonderfully — I get Aero glass, and it looks absolutely beautiful.
Some issues with the setup
Since Boot Camp is still in beta and Windows Vista was just released last week, it’s not without its hiccups. Here are the things that I have yet to get working, though I’ll likely just wait for Boot Camp’s final release before attempting to fix any of it, since nothing here is a blocking issue to me using it:
- Right-clicking doesn’t work without attaching my USB mouse.
- 2-finger scrolling doesn’t work.
- Eject, brightness and volume keyboard keys don’t work.
- Bluetooth doesn’t work.
- iSight camera doesn’t work.
Additionally, I did run into a small hiccup with the Airport wireless card. Windows Update automatically provided an update for the network card, which prevented the MacBook from seeing any wireless networks. Uninstalling the update fixed the issue.
Next steps
I hope to install the same dual boot setup on my home computer, a Mac Pro, this weekend. I think I’ll probably need to upgrade my Mac Pro’s RAM in the process, since I only have 1GB of RAM on it today.
About this page
This page contains a single post from Daniel Boerner's blog, of which Boot Camp + Windows Vista = no more Airport Extreme reboots is the latest post.
Are there more posts like this one?
Possibly. Within this blog, this post is categorized under apple and microsoft and it was posted on February 2, 2007. Those would be good places to start looking for related posts.
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