Vista on Boot Camp and Parallels

On

In my previous entry I stated I was installing Vista and how much trouble it was. Now I'm going to quickly explain how well it runs and if it's worth installing.

Boot Camp

First off will be on Boot Camp.

In order to install Vista I had to format my FAT32 drive to NTFS. This means that I can no longer write (copy to) my Windows partition anymore, like I previously could with XP. There is always Macdrive 7, but I don't have the money for that at the moment. A free alternative is MacFuse, except I have heard that isn't very fast. I'm not exactly desperate for copying files to Windows at the moment anyway.

Vista seems to perform relatively well on my Macbook 1.83 GHZ with 2 GB RAM. It gets a performance rating of around 3 (rated by Windows of course) and I have all the eye-candy turned on. (Aero effects and such) Everything seemed to be ok. Any problems is to do with Vista and not Boot Camp.

The Boot Camp drivers installed as normal, and I have yet to find anything different. (Touchpad clicking still doesn't work)

Parallels

Vista on Parallels was almost a completely different experience.

It installed flawlessly. Much better than Boot Camp. That was pretty much it. I'll say it early on, if you're planning on running Vista on Parallels I wouldn't recommend it. It runs pretty bad.

Because of the lack of Graphic Emulation in Parallels, everything runs in software mode. Meaning no Aero effects making Vista the same as XP. Or you'd think. A lot of things run very slow. I tried playing a game of Solitare and it lagged so bad it took me 3 sec to navigate to the close button.

I've delegated more resources to Parallels so that when I use it, it won't be as hard to use, but it's still a disappointment. But with the exception of performance, Vista seemed ok.

Conclusion

Most people wouldn't even consider upgrading to Vista, let alone trying to run it on their Macs. But I always like to try out new things and took the plunge, which leads me to the conclusion, if you plan on running Vista on your Mac, stick with Boot Camp.

Vista and Macbook

At the moment, I'm trying to install Vista Ultimate onto my Macbook. Last night I successfully installed it onto Parallels and now I'm trying to upgrade my XP Boot Camp partition to Vista. Unfortunately, it didn't go as smoothly as I had planned.

For one reason or another, a black screen popped up for a very long time. I left it for a while, and nothing seemed to happen. I tried moving the mouse to see if it was asleep but nothing. So I decided to kill the computer and reboot. Bad move.

Now it won't even boot up. (Windows that is) It goes to the start up screen, a blue screen flashes and it automatically reboots. Not exactly what you want to see. Fortunately, nothing has happened to my OS X partition, which I am now using to pull all of my data off my Windows partition so I can do a fresh install.

Will post back after I have finished, whether it means I have successfully installed Vista, or I have completely botched it.

[UPDATE]
After 2 hours of waiting on a black screen I got fed up forced a reboot. Unlike what happened earlier today, it has actually seemed to work. It booted up into a set-up and now Windows is checking my computers performance.

Windows On Mac OS X

&
One of the main features of the new Macs that Apple tries to sell to people thinking about switching is the ability to run Windows on the Mac OS X operating system. Apple hopes that people who are only staying with Windows because of the software can move away from that and get a Mac with a security blanket. (The ability to run Windows)

There are two main ways to run Windows. Through Parallels or Boot Camp. (Although you can run SOME software through a program called Crossover, but I'll go into that next week) There are a few main differences between Parallels and Boot Camp.

Parallels is shareware and runs Windows in a "virtual" environment, meaning that it pretend that a computer is running inside your computer. Therefore, this allows users to work both in the Mac OS X and Windows at the same time.



However, as you are running two operating systems at the same time, they must share resources, making your computer slower (especially if you don't have enough RAM). Also in it's current stage, Parallels doesn't support 3D acceleration, meaning no games.

Boot Camp on the other hand, is a free beta available from Apple's website. The advantages of Boot Camp is that you have full access to the computers resources, therefore allowing it to run at full speed. You also have pretty much no limitations so your computer will become exactly like your friends Windows computer, allowing you to do everything he/she does. (Games, Windows Only Software etc.) But since you can do everything a Windows computer can, you're also open to all the dangers of a Windows computer. (Viruses, Spyware)

In order to run Boot Camp you have to reboot your computer and hold down "option" when it's booting up again. You then select which partition of your HD you want to boot into. Your Mac one or Windows.



It must be noted though, that whichever way you decide to go, you must purchase your own copy of Windows to install, meaning running Windows isn't cheap. Also if you want to use Boot Camp you must have Windows XP SP2 or more recently, Windows Vista. (With the latest 1.2 release)

Parallels has a free trial which is avaliable for download from here. http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/ Boot Camp can be downloaded from Apple's website. http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/