Re: Macbook Pro and Windows Questions

Dear friends:

Noone <nonone@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <jollyroger-8BCA04.13181427072008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jolly Roger <jollyroger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

You'll enjoy the upgrade immensly, I think. : )

I did buy a Macbook Pro and I'm sure once I get it set up I will be
extremely pleased. Especially with more processor speed and increased
RAM. I've upgraded to 4gig RAM.

If you wish to use Boot Camp, you should know that it will require that
you restart your Mac to boot into Windows, and restart again to boot
back into Mac OS X. With Boot Camp, Windows applications cannot run
along side Mac OS X applications.

There are alternative solutions to Boot Camp <snip>

I did read up that I need to use Boot Camp in order to set up. I also
read about Paraells and VMFusion. I purchased a copy of VMWare Fusion.

How much HD space should be used to partition for Windows?

Virtualization solutions have one major caveat: While they run most
Windows applications at full speed just as if you were booted into
Windows (and sometimes even faster!), neither offers much support in the
way of hardware-accelerated 3D video. This means that Windows
applications that use hardware acceleration will not perform as well as
they would if you booted directly into Windows with Boot Camp. The good
news is the two classes of Windows applications that require 3D video
acceleration are Windows games and CAD/3D modeling applications. If you
don't plan on running such applications, I highly recommend you consider
using a virtualization solution to run Windows for the obvious benefits
- mainly not having to reboot or partition hard drives.

I have no plans on playing gams or using CAD/3D software. I've never
been much of a gamer, even on the Mac. So it sounds like VMWare Fusion
will work well.

Thanks though for the additional information. If I should decide to run
any game programs in the future, I'll remember to boot directly into
Windows from Boot Camp.

Feature-wise, the two are very similar. In general, I've found that
vmWare Fusion is more no-frills and is compatible with more USB devices,
while Parallels offers more eye candy, such as the spinning cube
animation similar to what you see when you use fast user switching in
Mac OS X.

I read up on both and came to conclusion that VMWare Fusion sounded
like the way to go. Thanks for your input on the two.

You'll find most will tell you Windows XP - hands down - because it
performs better and does not utilize as much of the hardware to do the
same work. But you should also consider the system requirements of
whatever Windows applications you plan to run. If one or more require
Vista, you may be stuck with running Vista.

Yes, so far all PC people I know say XP. But now I wonder if Pro or
Home. Have no idea what the difference is besides price.

Amazing how many versions of Windows OS compared to how Mac OS releases
are handled. Pretty crazy!

It may be that some of these supposed Windows-only CDs are not actually
Windows-only. If you give us a list, we can tell you more.

They are indeed only Windows only. I tried opening on Mac and the only
files on them are EXE files. They are Pharmacy Technician Study CDs,
and also some study and informational CDs from specific hospitals and
retail pharmacies.

Thanks again for your input, it's much appreciated!

Strictly speaking, you don't need BootCamp to use VMWare Fusion or
Parallels Desktop, but I see several advantages to use it. First, your
data is on a real disk partition instead of a simulated disk
partition, and this is a good measure to protect your data, the most
valuable asset in your computer. Real disk partitions are the standard
way where any operating system store valuable data.

Secondly, real disk partitions are faster than simulated disk
partitions, and they need less care to optimize them. I don't have
years of experience using VMWare Fusion for Mac, but I have a lot of
years of experience using VMWare for other platforms, and in order to
have a good disk access in their simulated disk partitions you should
periodically do a compacting and defragmenting process on them. And
these processes aren't without any risk.

Finally, real disk partitions don't disturb Apple's Time Machine
(Apple's backup on OSX), and simulated disk partitions (which are
simple OSX files) do, unless you explicitly exclude them in Time
Machine's settings.


Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)
Note: Please forgive me for my bad English, I am trying to improve it!
.

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