I've only just got myself a Macbook Pro 17". Its the 2.16ghz Intel dual Core model. I heard you can run windows on these. Anyone done it? Is it just like on a Pc when you install a partition, then install an OS on that?

 

it works the exact same as a PC and you will need bootcamp from the apple website.

personally i dont see why you need to do it unless you have bespoke software as there is parallels to use

 

Thanks for that. Do you know if the whole HDD will need re-formatting? I suppose it will if it works the same way as a PC.
I personally don't need XP on it. I bought the Macbook cheap to sell on. Just thought a dual operating system would be pretty cool, and maybe increase value.

 

No, it just repartitions it. If you don't want XP afterwards it can just remove that partition and add it back to the main Mac one.

I use it for PC games, anything else I can do in Parallels.

 

I see. Thanks.
So is Parallels some kind of virtual Windows software?

 

Yep

Parallels Desktop for Mac

 

put vista on mine and runs great

 

Parallels is awesome, I use it daily. The main difference is with bootcamp you have to reboot to switch between OS's whereas with parallels you just run a virtual machine in a window and can quickly move between windows and os x (and share files between them). Each VM has its own IP as well.

 

I use both Parallels 3 and BootCamp 1.3 on my Intel iMac. If I want to play a game, do something processor intensive, or something that a VM cannot handle then I'll boot into XP, otherwise I'll run Vista. I also use Parallels to run Windows 2000/2003 server for testing purposes and it seems more than happy. I have parallels configued to use my Bootcamp partition as it's "disk" so I get the same setup regardless of wether I use BC or Parallels

One utilitiy I'd strongly recommend is MediaFour's MacDrive product. It allows XP and Vista to natively read/write to Macintosh formatted disks. This means when you boot into XP/Vista or run it via Parallels, your Macintosh partition shows up as a disk in Windows Explorer. Very handy indeed if you want to access files. It's of more use when using Bootcamp as in Parallels you can setup shared folders and, I think, drag and drop files between the VM and Mac OS X.

When it comes to backing up the Windows partition I use either NetRestore Helper 3.5.5 (part of the free NetRestore package) or Winclone. They will allow you to create an image of the windows partition and if you have any problems you can then simply restore that image back. It's not overly elegant but it does work. What I tend to do is to store data files in a location on the Mac partition wether I'm running OS X or XP/Vista. My Mac is backed up via Retrospect, so it ensures all the data files in this location are backed up in a more normal fashion. I typically backup the PC partiton about once a week, or if I make a major change (install/remove software).

If there is a problem I use NRH/Winclone to restore the image back to my prior backup, typically I lose little if anything when doing this.

I've recently installed Vista Ultimate on the PC partition and it seems to run pretty well. I've disable UAC as it was seriously annoying me by asking for authorisation to do pretty much anything, they really should have copied what OS X does in regards to admin auth, it's a lot less intrusive, especially when you're an Administrator user.

The only other thing I'd mention about Bootcamp is that the PC partition will appear on the Mac desktop and if it's formatted as FAT32 then you will have read/write access to it. If it's formatted as NTFS then OS X will only have read-only access to it.

 

Just to add, I also run W2K3, Solaris 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux - no problems whatsoever. (In Parallels)

 

I just wish it had support for Novell Netware I did email them when Parallels was first released and they stated the next major revision should support netware, I took that to mean version 3, but it seems not I know VMWare Fusion supports it as I had it running under the first beta of Fusion.

It will be tempting once Fusion is released to see how many will go over to it from Parallels. I'm not going to abandon Parallels just because they don't support Netware, I don't use it that much, but if it was supported it would mean I could depreciate my seven year old PC server, which is where Netware currently lives (along with XP Pro, Win 2000 Server, Win 2003 Server - Both setup as AD DC's and it also has SLES9 installed).

 

I have just upgraded to Parallels 3 and even though I am not that techy it really is excellent.

There is now a mode where you can have the Win XP command line sitting at the bottom of the mac screen and completely freely move between mac and XP. I have also now got Office 2007 running and with the disks shared and connected I can read all my mac folders as if they were XP folders and I can see no differnce - Parallels simply handles it.

My last challenge is to get my USB 3g Broadband modem to connect to my XP VM. Working on that right now!

 

I now use VMWare Fusion, best thing is it uses the same disk images across all it's products so I can take images from work (running on VMWare for PCs) and run them on my Mac. Also it's a lot slicker than Parallels IMO.

Not to mention loads of Virtual Appliances available.

 

I purchased the upgrade to Parallels 3 a few weeks ago and it's been working like a charm. I also decided to purchase VM Fusion as well. It's going to be officially released on Monday 6th Aug so the current version that is out there is very polished, in fact it's versioned as 1.0 so it is probably the release version. It's currently $39, normal price after release will be $79, so I thought it a good time to nab a copy.

As previously mention Fusion runs Netware, whereas Parallels does not, and being able to have ALL my server OSes running as VMs rather than on the old Athlon based box I've got, is rather cool, plus it's way more convenient. It also means I can have rather more complex setups, with the real PC acting as a domain controller and my VM 2003 Server acting as a member server, or even a separate domain controller. Very handy for testing indeed.

 

Now got the rather excellent "coherence" option working full time. Mac screen with an XP task bar along the bottom of the screen when I need to access Office or my trading software.

Brilliant!