MacBook Windows 7

I installed Windows 7 (Build 6801) on my MacBook “Core 2 Duo” 2.0 13″ (Black) with 3GB RAM.

To manage the boot menu for my Vista and Leopard partitions, I use rEFIt instead of Boot Camp. After I made a backup disk image of the Vista partition, I booted the Windows 7 DVD, reformatted the Vista partition and began the installation. It went a lot faster than the Vista install.

The Boot Camp drivers from the Leopard DVD installed without any problems in Windows 7 – the Apple Built-in Bluetooth, the Apple Built-in iSight, the Apple Trackpad Enabler, the Apple Keyboard, the Apple IR Receiver, the Atheros AR5008X Wireless Network Adapter, the Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller, the SigmaTel High Definition Audio Codec and the Boot Camp Control Panel. Windows 7 installed the Mobile Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family (Prerelease WDDM 1.0 Driver) for the display adapter.

I used Randy’s SharpKeys 2.1.1 (a registry hack) to remap the Apple enter key (on the bottom row) to a forward delete key so I don’t have to hold down the fn key and delete for that function. I also mapped F8 to Prtscr – another Windows key that’s missing on the MacBook keyboard.

Thankfully, my two year old MacBook still feels responsive in Windows 7 (and in Vista). I’ve never had any major problems with Vista, and so far, Windows 7 seems to be an improvement.

Macbook Vista SP1

I applied Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to my dual-boot Macbook. I use rEFit instead of Boot Camp, with OS X as the default OS, so after each restart, I had to manually select the Vista partition.

After a couple of restarts, Vista started up OK and I ran the Windows Experience Index tool and got this. (I manually stuck the old Apple logo in there; Apple is not a Windows OEM Vendor)

OS X Vista Linux

Version 7.10 of Ubuntu Linux was released today. I downloaded the desktop 386 version and burned the ISO to a CD.

rEFIt Bootloader

The live version booted quickly on my Macintrash using rEFIt (a bootloader and maintenance toolkit for the Extensible Firmware Interface). Ubuntu configured my Marvell Yukon gigabit Ethernet adapter (as eth0) and my DHCP server gave it an address, but the Atheros wi-fi chipset didn’t show up as eth1.