[arjunM]

Hi There,

I know some of you will want to go off in some kind of rant in response to this, and I suppose that is perfectly understandable, but I will ask anyway.

I understand it is possible to have only the Vista OS on my Macbook Pro as explained in this thread.

I have only a 100GB harddrive and about 30GB of that is being used by MacOS. Now, please pardon me for this, but I hardly even use the MacOS and I would like to get rid of the MacOS partition without having to reinstall Vista and everything all over again. All my applications are for Windows and I use Windows specific programs like Solidworks a lot of the time.

Can I just delete the MacOS and the BootCamp partition from Windows? Will that corrupt the boot somehow?

Thanks for any help anyone could lend!
Arjun

[JonoMarshall]

I can't understand this, I know it's your choice, but why buy overpriced hardware if you don't want OS X? Simply for aesthetics?

[arjunM]

Well overpriced is a relative thing depending on personal value. It is a bit more expensive sure, but there are some reasons why I preferred the Macbook Pro over other options.
1. I appreciate good industrial design. The Macbook Pro is a very well designed piece of hardware. This includes the aesthetics of it, sure, but also the functionality, the size, the interface, the build quality and the materials. The AC adapter is fantastic as well as it's magnetic plug. Also I can use it on my lap or on my bed without worrying about blocking the exhaust/intake like some other laptops I've used. Backlit keyboard at night, built in iSight, slot load disc drive... I could go on about the hardware and design. It's really impressive and for me is the primary reason why I chose it over other laptops on the market.
2. For a 3 year hardware warranty alone, 300 dollars is a good deal.
3. Apple's educational discount made it worth the change, even though I had to purchase Vista separately.
4. The Macbook Pro 17" is slightly more expensive than similar PC Notebooks, but it includes some pretty great standard interfaces, including Firewire 800, and optical line in and out.

I know OS X is a great OS. The truth is that I actually really loved using it. When I installed and used Vista for the first time from BootCamp I was really dissapointed with the fact that I had to use Vista for all my applications. But I did tinker around in Vista and since all of the applications I use and design for are Windows based, MacOS is hardly touched. Anyway, I hope that helped you understand the reason why I am asking this above question.

[ibook_steve]

Why don't you just use Parallels in Mac OS X using the Boot Camp partition so you only need to use Windows for those certain apps?

Steve

[TheoCryst]

Because Macs do not use a standard MBR for booting like a PC, I'm not sure how easy this would be. Your best bet would be to simply wipe the drive and start over from scratch with the Vista install DVD, though it may be possible to delete the OS X partition and utilize the free space in Vista using a 3rd-party tool.

There is one good reason not to do this, however: driver updates. Boot Camp updates can not be installed without OS X, probably for this exact reason. This may change when Leopard is released, but who knows? The thing is, you will be stuck at your current level of drivers more or less indefinitely if you choose to remove OS X (unless you have a friend who can burn the drivers for you).

Oh, and just ignore the people who say you shouldn't do this: I know two people who have, and I completely support it. What's wrong with wanting to run the software you need on the hardware you love?

[arjunM]

Thanks TheoCryst

Yeah I have considered the driver issue, I think I will wait until I absolutely need the extra 30 GB of space on my drive... and then take the plunge.
The new bootcamp (1.3b) drivers seem to work well enough for me, but then again any kind of firmware upgrade or warranty service would probably require MacOSX as well.

The new videos of Leopard are amazing... Maybe in the future I'll be able to make the investment and purchase MacOS versions of all my software... but it's not likely that will happen for a while.

Thanks again!

[Eriamjh]

Can you run a stripped down version of OSX, boot to the command line, then run boot camp from the terminal to install windows?

30GB seems like a lot. Did you delete ALL the apps and utilities? Did you delete the languages and PPC code? I would think you could get it down to 5GB.

[dn15]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh 

Can you run a stripped down version of OSX, boot to the command line, then run boot camp from the terminal to install windows?

All Boot Camp does is burn a disc of drivers and facilitate proper partitioning to run multiple systems. You don't actually need Mac OS X at all on a machine where you just want to run Windows. Just pop in the disc and wipe the entire drive as if you were on a generic PC. The only potential issue I can think of with not having OS X is not being able to burn updated driver discs.

[The_Man]

I'm in the same boat. After installing Bootcamp and Vista I have not touched the Mac OS. I bought the Mac because Outlook couldn't perform the kind of project management that Entourage could, but after many months of tinkering I could not get Entourage to do what I want, and the lack of Exchange server tasks support hampered me. I have since found that a combination of Vista, Outlook 2007 and Sharepoint fulfill my needs. That leaves me with a powerful and well designed Mac notebook with a Mac OS partition that I no longer need (the only thing I boot to OSX for is ITunes, having heard rumors of problems with the Vista version). I gave the Vista partition only 60gb since I originally installed it as a test environment. I now need all the HD space I can get for Vista and apps. I am thinking about swapping the DVD drive for another HD (giving me 360GB of internal HD space via the MCE Optibay solution).

[TheoCryst]

Just a quick update: most (if not all) of the iTunes/Vista bugs have been worked out in the past few updates, so feel free to move your music to your Windows partition if restarting becomes a pain.

[The_Man]

Thanks for the tip! I'll do just that. I'll look forward to seeing if Leopard and the next version of Office for Mac are improved enough to entice me to use them as my primary OS and application suite. Even if I continue to use and M$ OS and apps my next notebook purchase will also be a Mac so that I have all the options and the best of both worlds.

[arjunM]

An update on my end as well...
I have been using Mac OS X much more often now, and I find myself switching between Operating systems often.
MacOS X is really kind of like my playground when I want to escape from work related things. So I kind of actually like the psychological escape... if that makes any sense at all.

Windows -> Work (65GB)
Mac OS X -> Play (28GB)

Vista is really starting to show its weaknesses and immaturity as an OS and this is favourable for OS X. Vista currently has got a file copying/moving/deleting/zipping/unzipping bug on my system that nearly cripples it. I might be making the transition to OS X over time... Unfortunately about a week before I got my Macbook Pro I got CS3 Design Premium for Windows... But like I said, I don't mind the psychological differentiation, personally.

I haven't needed extra space on either partition yet either, in fact I've managed to free more space up on both! I have a 250GB external drive that I use to store all my music, backups and videos. It is an NTFS partition so I can only write to it in Windows. But I can still listen to music and watch shows while I'm in MacOS.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let you all know that it's not likely that I'll be getting rid of either OS any time soon.

Thanks!

[Tomchu]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

Why don't you just use Parallels in Mac OS X using the Boot Camp partition so you only need to use Windows for those certain apps?

Steve

Because ...
- Parallels only presents a single core to the guest OS
- Barely useful 3D (nothing that Vista can take advantage of, anyway)
- OS X is still running underneath, using resources