Apple 2GHz MacBook & Windows XP - ne1?
18 February 2007, 01:48 PM
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Apple 2GHz MacBook & Windows XP - ne1?
I'm looking to buy a new laptop and fancy an Apple now you can duel boot with it (really need WinXP for work applications).
Is anyone currently running XP on a Macbook, any issues?
Worth getting?
Cheers
Richard.
Is anyone currently running XP on a Macbook, any issues?
Worth getting?
Cheers
Richard.
18 February 2007, 01:49 PM
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i use it with no problems, new version of boot camp supports the built in cam and some other goodies aswell
i'll be experimenting with vista at the end of the month
i'll be experimenting with vista at the end of the month
18 February 2007, 05:20 PM
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The keys on the Macbook aren't as nice as the Macbook pro IMHO and may take some getting used to but you could just get a wireless keyboard for it for desk use...
18 February 2007, 05:20 PM
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Definitely worth getting, but then I would say that as I'm a bit of a Mac fan.
I've got XPSP2 (You MUST have an XP SP2 bootable CD to install XP on an Intel Mac) running under Boot Camp on my 17" Intel iMac. It works flawlessly and is the same as running it on a normal PC, which makes sense as the machine is basically just a PC that can run Mac OS X as well
I actually use Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop for Mac (A virtual machine solution similar to Virtual PC or VMWare) on my machine. Why? Well, if I need to use the full capabilities of the machine, say for playing games, I will boot into XP using Boot Camp, so the full resources of the machine are available to me. If I want to quickly run, for example, Microsoft Access (It's not available in Office for Mac), then I'll use Parallels, as it allows me to use the Boot Camp partition instead of creating a separate virutal disk. This means all the files in my windows partition and the applications are available via Parallels.
As it's running within Mac OS X it means I can copy and paste between the two systems with ease.
One thing of note with Boot Camp is that it will NOT allow you to read your normal Mac OS X formatted disk as Windows does not understand the HFS partitioning scheme used by Macs. What I have done is to use MediaFour's MacDrive product which allows Windows to "see" Mac formatted drives. This allows me to access all the directories on my Mac drive from within XP.
One thing worthy of note is that Boot Camp is still beta software, it's going to be included within Apple's next version of Mac OS X, 10.5, codenamed Leopard, which is due to ship in late spring (I'm speculating it'll be around June 11th - 15th). I mentioned this as with any beta version, there could be unforseen issues, but I've not, touch wood, experienced any as yet. There is also talk that Apple may release a standalone version of Boot Camp for Pre OS X users.
One other thing. At present Boot Camp does not officially support Vista. I *think* it's possible to install Vista, but I've not actually tried it, mainly as I am not at a point where I wish to upgrade. I would fully expect the next beta, if there is one, if not the final release of Boot Camp to provide support for Vista.
If you have any other questions, ask away and I'll do my best to answer them
I've got XPSP2 (You MUST have an XP SP2 bootable CD to install XP on an Intel Mac) running under Boot Camp on my 17" Intel iMac. It works flawlessly and is the same as running it on a normal PC, which makes sense as the machine is basically just a PC that can run Mac OS X as well
I actually use Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop for Mac (A virtual machine solution similar to Virtual PC or VMWare) on my machine. Why? Well, if I need to use the full capabilities of the machine, say for playing games, I will boot into XP using Boot Camp, so the full resources of the machine are available to me. If I want to quickly run, for example, Microsoft Access (It's not available in Office for Mac), then I'll use Parallels, as it allows me to use the Boot Camp partition instead of creating a separate virutal disk. This means all the files in my windows partition and the applications are available via Parallels.
As it's running within Mac OS X it means I can copy and paste between the two systems with ease.
One thing of note with Boot Camp is that it will NOT allow you to read your normal Mac OS X formatted disk as Windows does not understand the HFS partitioning scheme used by Macs. What I have done is to use MediaFour's MacDrive product which allows Windows to "see" Mac formatted drives. This allows me to access all the directories on my Mac drive from within XP.
One thing worthy of note is that Boot Camp is still beta software, it's going to be included within Apple's next version of Mac OS X, 10.5, codenamed Leopard, which is due to ship in late spring (I'm speculating it'll be around June 11th - 15th). I mentioned this as with any beta version, there could be unforseen issues, but I've not, touch wood, experienced any as yet. There is also talk that Apple may release a standalone version of Boot Camp for Pre OS X users.
One other thing. At present Boot Camp does not officially support Vista. I *think* it's possible to install Vista, but I've not actually tried it, mainly as I am not at a point where I wish to upgrade. I would fully expect the next beta, if there is one, if not the final release of Boot Camp to provide support for Vista.
If you have any other questions, ask away and I'll do my best to answer them
18 February 2007, 06:33 PM
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Many thanks for the info Markus - very useful. I think the next step for me is to pop into PC World and have a play around with the machine itself.
A lot will depend on whether I can see myself using the Mac partition much - as I'm a pretty diehard windows user. Still, even if I ran Windows 90% of the time it's still a sweet looking machine to do it on
Richard.
A lot will depend on whether I can see myself using the Mac partition much - as I'm a pretty diehard windows user. Still, even if I ran Windows 90% of the time it's still a sweet looking machine to do it on
Richard.
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18 February 2007, 11:58 PM
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The design is rather nice, plus there is always something satisfying about running windows on a Mac based machine
When you install boot camp you get to repartition the drive (one for OS X one for Windows) so you could give Windows the majority of the drive space.
One other thing you could do is to just install XP on it. As the machine is just a PC you can pop an XP cd into it, boot from and install just windows on it, so there wouldn't be a mac side at all. If you were to do that you'd want to get the boot camp drivers for XP before doing this though. To be honest I'd go for my former suggestion of just reducing the OS X partition size so you still have OS X on there, as there may well be firmware updates which can only be applied from the Mac side.
When you install boot camp you get to repartition the drive (one for OS X one for Windows) so you could give Windows the majority of the drive space.
One other thing you could do is to just install XP on it. As the machine is just a PC you can pop an XP cd into it, boot from and install just windows on it, so there wouldn't be a mac side at all. If you were to do that you'd want to get the boot camp drivers for XP before doing this though. To be honest I'd go for my former suggestion of just reducing the OS X partition size so you still have OS X on there, as there may well be firmware updates which can only be applied from the Mac side.
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