Since Apple switched to using Intel processors, it's been easy to run MacOS, Windows or even Linux on a Mac. You can boot directly into any operating system, just as you can on a PC, or you can run multiple operating systems at once using virtualisation.

When it comes to notebooks, a 13 inch widescreen display offers a great balance between portability and useability. The new 13 inch MacBook Pro (MBP) weighs in a mere 2.04 kg thanks to a chassis carved from a single block of aluminium. The LED backlit, 1280x800 display offers bright, vivid colours but the trade off is terrible glare and unfortunately Apple only offers the option of a matte display on the 17 inch MBP.

Screen glare aside, the 13 inch MBP sports features which will appeal to Mac and Windows users alike. Under the bonnet is a 2.26 or 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, up to 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, 160 or 250 GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chip, 802.11a/b/g/n wifi, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 2x USB2.0, Firewire 800, DVD burner, webcam and the option of a solid state drive. There's also an SD card slot, a first for Apple. The integrated battery promises "up to" seven hours of life and it delivered us just over six hours under normal conditions.

One great feature common to all Apple notebooks is the pull-away magnetic power connector, which stops your notebook crashing to the floor if someone trips over the cable. One annoying feature, unique to the 13 inch MBP, is that Apple has combined the audio in and out in a single jack, so if you want to record from external sources while using headphones you'll need to use USB for one.

When you lift the lid on the 13 inch MBP, you're struck by the button-less trackpad but don't panic, the bottom third is treated as a virtual button. You can even divide this to create a virtual right-click button, which Apple refers to as a "secondary click". You can also place two fingers on the trackpad to right-click, or hold the control button as you click. The "multi-touch" trackpad on the MBP range offers a number of tricks under MacOS which soon become second nature. You can place two fingers on the trackpad to scroll through documents, while sweeping four fingers up scatters the open windows to reveal the desktop, sweeping four fingers down shows all the open windows on the current up the Application Switcher. Some fingers to "pinch" the trackpad for zooming in and out.

MacOS 10.5 aka "Leopard" has plenty of other great useability features, but whether your consider MacOS, Windows or Linux to be the one true faith is an argument for another day. The beauty of the Intel-based MBPs is that they make it easy to switch between operating systems.

The easiest way to run Windows or Linux on an Intel Mac is to use virtualisation software such as Parallels, VMware Fusion and VirtualBox. These let you run various flavours of Windows or Linux within a window on top of MacOS. Both operating systems have access to the MBP's hardware along with network and online resources, plus you can adjust how much processing power and RAM is available to each operating system.

It's also possible to run your virtual OS in full-screen mode, which you can move to a second desktop (Leopard has built-in support for multiple desktops). Now you can switch between  operating systems with keyboard shortcut. Better still, you can completely integrate Windows into the Mac environment. The Windows Start menu is added to the Leopard's task bar (known as the Dock), allowing you to launch applications such as Internet Explorer, which appear in their own window as if they were running natively on MacOS. You can minimise Windows applications down to the dock, and Windows pop-up notifications even appear on your MacOS desktop. Such a feature is incredibly handy if you're reliant on a Windows-only application, for example web designers who need to see how their sites look in Internet Explorer or Google Chrome.

If you want to avoid the performance hit of virtualisation, you can create extra partitions on the MBP's hard drive and install other operating systems - just like a PC. Apple's Boot Camp Assistant simplifies the process if you're looking to install one version of XP Service Pack 2 or Vista, walking you through the process of partitioning the hard drive and then installing Windows drivers to support the MBP's hardware. It's easy to choose which operating system you want to use when you boot up the computer. You may need to install a few drivers manually as well as Apple's "Multi-Touch Trackpad Update for Windows XP and Vista" to allow features such as two-finger scroll and two-finger right-click under Windows.

If you're feeling more adventurous, you can partition the hard drive manually to install multiple versions of Windows and Linux. You can also install extra software to allow each operating system to read and write to the other partitions - such as MacDrive for accessing Mac HFS+ partitions from Windows and MacFuse for accessing Windows NTFS partitions from Leopard. Windows 7 is designed to be backwards compatible with Vista in terms of drivers, so it's not hard to get Release Candidate 1 up and running under BootCamp or virtualisation.

If you boot the MBP with Windows, you're no longer running Windows on MacOS - the notebook is now an actual PC running Windows on Intel. There's no performance hit and you get the full Windows experience. The only real difference is that you're faced with Mac keyboard and trackpad. They annoying this is that Apple doesn't offer Windows support for dividing the trackpad to create a virtual right-click button, but hopefully this will come with an update.

If you need the best of both worlds, Apple's 13 inch MacBook Pro is certainly one to consider. Apple's 13 inch MacBook Pro retails from $1899, for more details visit www.apple.com.au.

Reprinted from the August 2009 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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