.NET Developer on a Macbook Pro running Windows 7

Yes I know, It is strange but very true.

I am a Microsoft .NET programmer and I use a 17” Unibody Macbook Pro Mid 2009 model, with a 2.66 GHz CPU, 8 GB RAM, and a Intel X-25m 160GB SSD hard drive. On top of that, I'm running Windows 7 as my primary OS spending 99% of my time on it, and using 90% of my time in Visual Studio 2008, Outlook 2010 Beta or Google Chrome.

And I am happy. Well now I am, but it has been a hassle. For a little over a year, I have been struggling to make this baby perform under Windows 7, and I has not been easy. I must have used 100 hours reading blogs, discussion forums and reading web pages on the subject. 

This is actually my second Unibody Macbook Pro. My first was a 15" but I sold that one and bought the 17” model instead. This proved to be a good decision. The 17” has a marvelous battery life and a fantastic screen compared to the 15” model. It is also a lot more silent and not as hot during intensive use.

I am besides being a .NET developer also a consultant. It has been quite funny to see how my customers make funny faces when I sit down around the conference table, introducing myself as a Microsoft specialist, pulling a Macbook Pro from my briefcase. However, some of them have told me that they actually had the same idea and I made a promise to one of them to explain how I made it perform under Windows 7. What better way of doing that than writing a series of blog posts.

I will over the next few days write about what I did to make it perform, and describe the one issue that remains to be solved: How to enable AHCI and thus SATA2 speeds in Windows 7. But more on that later.