Windows on macbook

Question

please post your comments and suggestions.
am planning to buy the new macbook with this configuration:
Image
* 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 1GB memory
* 120GB hard drive1
* Double-layer SuperDrive
will WINDOWS VISTA HOME EDITION run effectively here?
will both OS like Windows and Mac run effectively? efficiently?
thank you.

Answer 1

If I'm not mistaken, Vista does not support installation on machines with EFI instead of BIOS. I personally tried to install Vista on my MacBook and received an error indicating that could not be installed on my hardware. I'm not entirely sure why XP would work, but not Vista. Vista will install under Parallels however. Here is the rather technical comment from Microsoft:
EFI, UEFI Support, and Windows Vista
Windows 2003 Server supports EFI 1.10 on Intel Itanium platforms. Microsoft Windows Server codename "Longhorn" supports EFI 1.10 on Intel Itanium platforms, and also introduces support for native UEFI boot on x64 64-bit platforms. Although the initial release of Windows Vista will not include UEFI x64 64-bit support, a subsequent Windows Vista release will support UEFI.
Given the advent of mainstream 64-bit computing and the platform costs previously discussed, Microsoft determined that vendors would not have any interest in producing native UEFI 32-bit firmware. Microsoft has therefore chosen to not ship support for 32-bit UEFI implementations.
For Microsoft, support for UEFI means rigorous testing on a heterogeneous mix of UEFI implementations on a wide range of hardware platforms. As of mid-2006, no firmware vendor has yet provided production-ready UEFI implementations.
The inability to perform wide testing on multiple implementations creates a risk-adequate testing must be done before operating system support can be released. This risk has driven the decision to enable UEFI support with Windows Server "Longhorn." By that time, it is expected that sufficient production-quality UEFI implementations will be available so Microsoft will be able to work with hardware vendors to test a wide range of platforms.
Microsoft is working closely with the Unified EFI Forum and industry partners to ensure that it can provide a high-quality, standards-based UEFI solutions. Microsoft has demonstrated Windows support for native UEFI boot at industry events such as Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). As part of this continuing effort, Microsoft is also making "technology preview" code for UEFI boot support available in the Windows Vista Beta 2 release. This technology preview allows partners to test their UEFI implementations to make production-ready samples available for Microsoft for testing support in Windows. The technology preview code will be removed for Windows Vista release candidates (RC) and final release to manufacturing. However, support for well-tested UEFI will be made available in a future update to Windows Vista. The supporting code will be present for Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 3 and Windows Server "Longhorn" release to manufacturing.
To help smooth the transition from BIOS boot to UEFI boot, differences between UEFI and BIOS environments are abstracted from the end user wherever possible. Once the OS is fully functional, it shields the user from underlying firmware differences. For example, a new boot configuration data (BCD) store was designed for Windows to help abstract these differences and to enable easier deployment of BIOS and UEFI systems.
Following are specifics of EFI versus BIOS boot:
To install the operating system by way of UEFI requires that the installation be booted via UEFI and vice versa-that is, an operating system installed via BIOS can only boot via BIOS. Once the operating system is installed via EFI, it can only boot via EFI because booting via BIOS cannot access the operating system metadata (BCD boot options) on the EFI System Partition (ESP).
Windows shipping on optical media will be able to boot either via UEFI or BIOS. El Torito multiple boot catalog support is used for this capability.
The default El Torito boot entry will be BIOS ETFS bootstrap code with an "X86" platform tag. For this to work:
The BIOS must support multiple boot entries.
It must ignore entries that do not have the "x86" tag.
It should default to booting the default entry.
The second El Torito boot entry will be for EFI boot application and will have the "EF" platform tag. This tag points to a mountable file system containing \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI.
EFI should ignore the PC/AT BIOS entry and recognize the EFI entry to mount the ESP partition before launching the boot application.
For platforms supporting UEFI and BIOS, the platform should default to boot via EFI.
Windows is planned to support both CD and DVD/UDFS boot. UDFS also uses El Torito and is built using the UDFS bridge format.
A UEFI system requires a separate EFI system partition (ESP). BIOS systems should also implement a separate system partition for the proper functioning of Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" features such as BitLocker Drive Encryption. This will also enable a smoother transition to EFI systems.
For SysPrep migration between EFI and BIOS systems, Windows state should not be maintained on the system partition.