Running Windows on Mac

[frankgindc]

Not sure what category this belongs in but does anyone have any insights on running Windows on a Mac?  For example, any thoughts on vmware v. parallels?  And do they both require that a portion of the HD be partitioned for a Win installation?  If so, how much?   And....could the the Win partition be mounted on an external drive?

Note:  I just found out that VmWare recommends 10GB and Parallels recommends 15GB for their installation -- but does anyone know what the true practical minimums are and whether that requires an actual partitioning or just a dedicted folder on the drive?

I'm making my upgrade tomorrow and can't figure out from the software's own websites the gist of it.

Thanks,
Frank

[andris]

Hi Frank,

I'm not hugely familiar with this, but I think you'd probably be happier running Windows on a Mac via Bootcamp (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html).  Bootcamp allows the Windows OS direct access to the system resources so that you are, in effect, running windows directly on the mac hardware. By contrast, VMWare and Parallels are both emulators.  They are mac applications that run within the MaxOS and allocate the system resources to the Windows OS as it runs inside its 'sandbox.' 

Obviously there's a big performance hit when everything you do inside the windows environment has to be reinterpreted by the Mac emulator (Parallels or VMWare) before being passed on to the hardware. 

Hope this helps,

Andris

[SteveM]

Frank,

I know this response is a bit late, but perhaps it will help others.

I run VMWare and Windows XP on my 15" MacBook Pro. I do not know what the practical minimums are, but it is just a file. There is no need to partition the hard drive.

And clarification on what Andris has written. VMWare and Parallels are not emulators. Running Windows on a PowerPC Mac did require an emulator which would translate the i86 instructions to PowerPC instructions, and as Andris points out this resulted in significant performance degradation (I know, having used VirtualPC). However, when using a Mac with an Intel chip no instruction translation is required, and Windows can run natively on the Mac hardware. There is a performance hit when running VMWare or Parallels, because you are running Windows in an application on OS X, but in practice I've found it to be negligible. Andris is correct the running Windows via Apple's Bootcamp is the fastest way to run Windows on Mac hardware, as you are only running Windows and not OS X when using Bootcamp. But I've found the benefits of running both Mac and Windows applications at the same time to be worth any performance hit.

As I mentioned I use VMWare and can easily recommend it. I choose VMWare because it can use both cores of my dual core processor (as of this writing Parallels can use only one core), is a full Cocoa app, and has a $20 mail in rebate  . Several of my coworkers use Parallels and are as equally pleased (I work in an IT shop and do photography for fun). Both seem to be well thought out and well implemented packages.

Good luck and have fun whichever you decide.

SteveM