MacBook Pro 13 Takes Top Spot For ‘Best Performing Windows Laptop’
Quick, someone give Alanis Morissette a ring and see if she's still adding lyrics to her song Ironic, because of she is, she's going to want to include some recent findings by Soluto, a cloud-based PC management service. In particular, we'd like to share with her Saluto's ranking of a mid-2012 model Apple MacBoo Pro 13 as the best performing Windows laptop. Come again?
As surprising and ironic as that sounds, and despite the fact that the MacBook Pro in question is the most expensive PC among the top three at $1,199 (the other two being an Acer Aspire E1-571 for $429 and Dell XPS 13 for $979), Soluto claims its ranking is spot on.
"A main factor in this machine’s metrics is the fact that every Windows installation on it is clean. With PC manufacturers loading so much crapware on new laptops, this is a bit of an unfair competition. But on the other hand, PC makers should look at this data and aspire to ship PCs that perform just as well as a cleanly installed MacBook Pro," Soluto explains.
Soluto isn't blind to the criticisms it's opening itself up to and readily admits and there's "sense behind" the claim that it's a bit uneven to compare a cleanly installed MacBook Pro with an OEM-imaged PC from Acer or Dell. To appease those who feel that way, Soluto plans to release a separate report comparing only cleanly installed machines.
As to the current data and ranking, Soluto highlights how infrequently crashes are reported on the MacBook Pro running Windows, the relatively low number of average background processes, average boot time, how often it hangs, and the nearly non-existent Blue Screen errors (0.01 per week).
We have to admit we're not totally surprised by this, even if we don't fully agree that a MacBook Pro is the ideal tool for Windows (the lack of a touchscreen is a major knock now if you plan to run Windows 8). When we reviewed Apple's MacBook Air 13 with Ivy Bridge, we ran it through a series of Windows-based benchmarks running Windows 7 via Boot Camp and came away impressed.
As surprising and ironic as that sounds, and despite the fact that the MacBook Pro in question is the most expensive PC among the top three at $1,199 (the other two being an Acer Aspire E1-571 for $429 and Dell XPS 13 for $979), Soluto claims its ranking is spot on.
"A main factor in this machine’s metrics is the fact that every Windows installation on it is clean. With PC manufacturers loading so much crapware on new laptops, this is a bit of an unfair competition. But on the other hand, PC makers should look at this data and aspire to ship PCs that perform just as well as a cleanly installed MacBook Pro," Soluto explains.
As to the current data and ranking, Soluto highlights how infrequently crashes are reported on the MacBook Pro running Windows, the relatively low number of average background processes, average boot time, how often it hangs, and the nearly non-existent Blue Screen errors (0.01 per week).
We have to admit we're not totally surprised by this, even if we don't fully agree that a MacBook Pro is the ideal tool for Windows (the lack of a touchscreen is a major knock now if you plan to run Windows 8). When we reviewed Apple's MacBook Air 13 with Ivy Bridge, we ran it through a series of Windows-based benchmarks running Windows 7 via Boot Camp and came away impressed.
