Boot Camp

Anyone doing this yet?, issues, etc?

I am interested in loading it on a 17 Mac book pro, but was curious what others have found.

performance, issues with applications, blue screens etc.

Paul Caldwell

Paul2660 said:

Anyone doing this yet?, issues, etc?

I am interested in loading it on a 17 Mac book pro, but was curious what others have found.

performance, issues with applications, blue screens etc.

Paul Caldwell

Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

Great to see you here!

Did you also consider Paralells?

http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/2006/07/parallels-desktop-hits-apple-store.html

"Parallels has been hitting Apple's Boot Camp on the nose as a solution for those people who need or want to run an alternative OS on their Intel based Apple Macs. They both have benefits and opposing pitfalls. Boot Camp provides compatibility and performance but requires a reboot between switches. Parallels enables you to run both simultaneously, and the performance is great for everything but graphics-intensive environments."

http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/3007

I hope people post their experience with both.

For example, comments on speed issue of "graphics" needs to be explained. Is it graphics in XP or in Mac or both that is slowed in Paralells?

I practice, how does this dual benefit help opne's normal workflow or is it just to be PC friendly for corporate work?

Asher

Parallels is slower, but far more flexible: you can have both systems running side by side. This is ideal if you are a Mac person but need to run a PC application on the side, for whatever reason. Also, you can run pretty much any OS in Parallels, not just XP. I have heard of NeXTSTEP running in Parallels. Something I need to try myself (ah, the memories!)

BootCamp offers far less flexibility, but you are running a "real PC". It's said to be among the fastest PCs out there - I didn't try a benchmark, but from what I've seen it runs nicely. Drawback is obviously the need to reboot between using the systems, and also the fact that you can have only two partitions on your disk - OSX and XP. If you have already partitioned your Mac drive and then want to install BootCamp you are SOL. There are workarounds for this for people who really know what they are doing on command line, but it's not something for the uninitiated, and needless to say it can cost you all your data if you type the wrong argument.

Having seen both in use at work, I don't think I'd be too inclined to use BootCamp but rather Parallels; however, for some people BootCamp may be just the right thing. I guess I am not dedicated enough to XP

As for your specific question re: graphics: Only the Windows graphics are slow under Parallels. A simple explanation of it would be that under XP, it (XP) has direct access to all hardware, incl. graphics card, therefore it can do with it whatever it wants. On the other hand, with OSX running Parallels, OSX is the ruler over the video card. Think of it as a "normal" emulator (as we used to have VirtPC), except that it doesn't have to do the most difficult and time consuming task - translate between machine codes. But this aside, Parallels still needs to do all the other things - bridging between I/O devices and storage, sound, and of course graphics. That takes time, and removes any potential efficiency that may have been in the original Windows app, since the OSX graphics software architecture is oh so much different.

Thanks, to both of you.

Actually my goal was to be able to use the 17" macbook with windows mainly but still have the abtility to go back to mac when needed. I think the overall design point of the 17" powebooks are just hard to beat, size, weight, screen etc. I had one of the old G4's 17" but just couldn't justify keeping up both environments. Boot camp or parrells both are appealing.

I guess the only real concern is that you don't have any support, but with windows, that's already true anyway.

Thanks
PFC

Well if you want to use the Mac just occasionally if ever then Parallels really isn't for you.

I am running Windows on the 17" MacBook Pro with 100% success, and it is my fastest Windows machine. Even faster than my desktop...AMD dual core 64 2x 4400+ at 2.2GHz.

Michael,

My good friend, hi!

This speed is with Boot Camp or Parallels?

Asher

Can't be with Parallels