<p>Can anyone describe their experience with running Windows on a Mac via Boot Camp?</p>
<p>It’s been claimed that Windows XP runs better on a Mac than it does on a PC. I know that might be tough to get a definitive answer on this, but anyone have any opinions?</p>
<p>Also, how easy has it been using the same usb flash drive transferring between PC and Mac?</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Several programs I’m going to use don’t have a Mac version equivalent or I already own the Windows version. I am a chemistry major and many of the programs for the instruments we use run on Windows only. </p>
<p>Aside from perhaps 3 programs I plan to have on my laptop, any other computer work I do is generic enough to lend itself to Mac or Windows. I already know that the lab group I’m going to be working in uses PCs, but I’m really interested in getting a Macbook (possibly even the Pro). </p>
<p>It’s hard to ignore Macs with all the reviews I’ve seen. I would really like to experience this reliability Mac users speak of. </p>
<p>Other reasons:
- being able to run both operating systems (is it as cool as it sounds?)
- their physical beauty (I’m admittedly fickle so beauty is something to consider)
- I would just like to try something new</p>
<p>I’m prepared to venture into the Mac world but I just need to know if Windows runs on Macs as smoothly as the Apple site claims or if I’ll regret it.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I don't have a Mac but I am in a similar position and have done some research (planning to purchase this summer)</p>
<p>I believe if you use boot camp (switching between OSes by rebooting), Windows XP will run flawlessly, as it would on any normal PC computer.</p>
<p>Parallel desktops, running both of them at the same time, causes some performance hit. To what extent, I'm not sure, but as long as you're not doing intense computer simulations or heavy-duty graphics modeling, then you should be OK.</p>
<p>Why is it a PITA? I would think that wunning Windows straight up with full resources dedicated to doing so would be less troublesome than running it virtually while OSX itself is running in the background...
I don't have personal experience doing so, though, so I can't really say.</p>
<p>Dual booting is very annoying - you have to wait for the computer to restart and everything. You have to close all your programs and shut everything down. Usually, you just want to use one program in Windows, and want to keep everything else running in the other OS (Linux for me, OS X for you). It's much easier to just run Windows in the VM, especially with Parallels' Coherence mode and VirtualBox's Seamless mode - the windows are directly embedded in the OS X/Linux interface.</p>
<p>As for the resources, I've had no problems with that. I have a Sony VAIO desktop with 2 GB RAM and a 3.0 Ghz Pentium D, and it runs Windows XP inside Kubuntu Linux, using VirtualBox, just fine when I give Windows 512 MB RAM. I don't have any lag, either in Windows or Linux.</p>
<p>I have one laptop dual boot Windows XP Home and Windows XP x64 edition. The biggest pain was finding 64-bit drivers for the machine. That's the typical problem running Windows is getting drivers.</p>
<p>Boot Camp takes care of the drivers for you making the installation simple.</p>
<p>BTW, one good reason for running Boot Camp over Parallels is memory consumption. I routinely use 1.5 GB of RAM on Windows and doing that in a VM on a 2 GB system would be a performance problem.</p>
<p>@Don_Quixote:
That's even more annoying, unless you have Parallels boot the boot camp partition in a virtual machine...not sure if that's possible though.</p>
<p>Boot camp will allow anything windows to run fine. The emulators will slow your computer down like no other. And BC is free. Parallels costs money.</p>
<p>I hear good things about both but I do not see it being a problem to restart your computer into 'PC mode' with boot camp. I would think you would being using Mac OS about 75% of the time and PC 25% of the time at most. PC for games and PC-only programs, Mac OS for everything else. If they are equal in most respects, why pay $80 for parallels?</p>
<p>Because then you can run both at the same time, which is much, MUCH more convenient. You don't have to close all your running programs and wait for ~5 minutes for the computer to shut down and reboot into the other OS. Parallels is well worth the cost, considering everything that it does. Now if you're heavily using Windows like BCEagle91, that's another issue. But most people just need to run 1 or 2 programs in Windows.</p>