After having used 15" Macbook Pros both for (professional) image editing and my IT job, I'm in need for a Windows 7 notebook that is as good as the MBP. My problem is that I've switched careers. I'm now at the receiving end in terms of hardware and applications - and had to find out that MS Office 2011 for Mac is a terrible POS. It crashes on my about 15 times a day. I'm working on rather complex (Word) documents with lots of tables, linked PP presentations etc. I already re-installed everything but the problem is just not going away - and seems to be rather common if you google it.

Also, from next year on, I'll actually be teaching MS Office for Windows classes (in addition to my other tasks), so I definitely need a Windows environment.
Using Windows on the MBP just doesn't cut it - battery life is terrible and the fan-noise level drives me nuts.

To make it short: I'm in need of a Windows 7 notebook that's at least as good as the MBP 15". My requirements:

- decent display resolution
- QUIET
- fast processor / graphics card and / or
- SSD drive to make up for slower processor

I was looking at some of the Ultrabooks (especially the Asus UX31). However, those don't seem to be readily available.

Any other suggestions?

Peter


ps: please don't turn this into a rant thread à la Mac vs. Windows. I have nothing against my Macbook Pro. As a matter of fact, I love it. But MS Office 2011 is hurting my business.

HP Envy or EliteBook series ?

Why not enjoy the best of both worlds..?

Bootcamp

VMware

Paralles

Bootcamp: tried that - Windows just doesn't run well on these computers. I don't blame Apple for not optimizing their drivers. The notebook is extremely loud and the battery life turns from great into miserable.

Parallels: tried that, too - never got it to work with the projector at work :-/ Also, MS Office feels very sluggish on Parallels

the new Envy series looks amazing. However, god only knows if HP will ever sell those in Switzerland. I had an Envy 14 before - took them about a year to start selling them here and they never offered the high-res screen option. I'll definitely look at the Elitebooks. Do these run quiet?

I've used it on my Mac Pro without any changes in the fan speed. Never tried it on my MB Air so I don't know what the battery life would be like but I don't see how it would be any different when using Boot Camp since you'd be only running one OS at a time unlike the others which would for sure put a bigger strain on the battery with 2 OS's going at once.

I do not have an Envy, but the Elitebook series ( Matte screen with 8GB RAM ). Love it very much ( runs OSX86 too ) for video creation and editing.

For presentations, I use a humble Aetbook with HDMI 4GB RAM ( AO721-142ki )

The Mac Pros work wonderfully with Windows - we had several of them in dual-boot configurations at my old job.

The problem with the Macbook Pro is that I have the i7 version, which runs quite hot under Mac OS X already. Watching an HD video, for example, makes the thing sound like a vacuum cleaner. Under Windows, they seem to be idling at higher temperatures to begin with. That pushes it over the edge and the fans run constantly.

roflmaopimp