Windows 7 on MacBook

Having a MacBook is something I am quite proud about but then I am not ready to give-up the Windows that I have known all my life. I have been using Windows 7 for over a year and what a cool OS I find it to be. Even though the Mac OS X Snow Leopard is cool too. I still want my Windows running on it. What's the use of having an Intel-based processor if I can't run Windows as well. Even Linus if I choose to.

I installed Windows 7 on my BootCamp drive and it was smooth though Apple recommends on Windows XP and Windows Vista. After installation, I installed the bootcamp tools supplied by Apple. All my devices seems to work fine. One by one I checked them and tick them off in my head: Wifi- check, bluetooth -check ....

I decided to look a bit more under the hood. Fired up Device Manager and alas, two errored devices. Apple USB Ethernet and Co-Processor does not seem to have the right drivers. Fumbled around for hours without success to getting them to work. I can't live without an ethernet port even if the co-processor does not seem to matter initially; some computation will have to suffer.

Come Google to the rescue (thanks for not censoring anymore in China). Found out some other people have encountered this and no clear-cut solution until I came across a post by tnkgrl Mobile. In the post, a link to the driver is provided.

The Windows XP driver provided works like magic.

Things I hate about my Mac

The Mac is a very good machine. I am like the Paul of the Mac machine formerly Saul of PC - prosecuting the Mac System and stoning Mac users (not literarily) if you happen to have read the bible at all or heard from those that have read (like I did).

I find the Mac incomparable with the PC. The Spec of My Mac Book Air is about the Spec of my previously owned PCs I bought 2 years ago but much faster than my last PC with far better Spec. Believe me, you won't be comparing "Apple" to "Apple" comparing the Mac and PC.

I could hear someone whispering "That's cos u were running Windows". Wrong!! I have Windows 7 running on my Mac too and it's Blazing fast.

My conclusion is that I will like to believe this is due to some sluggish defect in the PC design.

Spoken by a recent Mac user ....

However, I hate a few stuffs about my Mac.

1. My MacBook Air has just one USB slot. This is no problem with Mac but on the other hand it is. I could have chosen other model other than the Air you would say, but then I had the option of a USB hub you would also suggest. Wrong! The Mac work's better with powered USB so I could not have my network running and still have my drive on. Solution - Buy a powered USB hub - $35

2. NTFS drives are loaded as readonly. Just wondered why Apply had to make this the default option in Mac. OS X reads NTFS pretty well and should also write if you ask me.
Solution - Include UUID in /etc/fstab file (tiresome and often require restart) or buy a NTFS Manager like Paragon NTFS for mac $40

3. Mac is too pretty. I find it hard to imagine the future of my Mac with faded keyboards and trackpads. Think I need the Wireless keyboard and mouse - mouse I say, I want the Magic Mouse $70+$70 = $140

4. Can't get Mail to work with Exchange Server used in most enterprise. Solution - Buy Mac Entourage bundled with Microsoft Office for Mac. $150

5. Miss Visual Studio So bad. Wish their a version of that the works on the Mac. Mac offers XCode, plus I got Eclipse working (even though they confused on Carbon or Cocoa) and MonoDevelop works great too. Solution is buy CrossOver or Install Windows 7 on your bootcamp and run from VM Fusion with Unity Mode. - average cost - $70 (cross over) + $80 /2 = $75

6. Can't upgrade my MacBook Air RAM beyond 2GB as it has no drive-bays. The RAM is soldered unto the board. I run quite a lot of VMs and 2GB would not be enough. These days my system locks up when I boot up my bootcamp Windows from VM fusion. Solution is buy a Mac Mini and moves task to it. $600

At the end of the day, I have $1040 worth of hatred for my Mac but despite that, I still LOVE IT...

Fixing Ghosted File

Just a few weeks old on the Mac and I already experienced a peculiar situation twice. It's been fun configuring the Mac and getting it as close as possible to my previous Windows dexterity as possible though it's been a lot of distractions too.

On moving files sometimes especially unto a destination NTFS partition, I realised some of the files moved are ghosted. I investigated and discovered this is due to incomplete copy operation. In my situation, the copy process probably did not clean up successfully after the copy. Why will this happen? I already lost files to this previously as I am left with no choice but to delete such files.

This time I had to make sure these files these files are recovered. On googl(e)ing, I learn about undisplayed file attributes of Unix and Mac files. Also learn that tools like RixStep ACP XFiles tools help with controlling such attributes. A single use license cost about $59.

Later I learn about the SetFile tool bundled with the XCode tools. An accompanying GetFileInfo tool will give

$ GetFileInfo [file name]

this is what's shown for Normal files. In my case I had "brok" as type and "MACS" as creator.

This can be corrected by using Send File as below

$ SetFile -c "" -t "" [file name]

Knowing myself not to be able to remember this months down the line, I added this to my .profile file under the unghostfile alias.