Bootcamp Parition Size - and what OS?

[epoxy5]

Well I will need to install bootcamp on an imac and I was wondering about a few things:

1 - I have both Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows XP and I would prefer Vista for the bootcamp OS but this is mainly because it looks better than XP... Would it be better to sell my Vista software and just install XP - are they both equally well implemented?

2 - What size should I choose for a partition that will mainly hold the OS, Office 2007 and a few small programs I need. I would love to have some GB's left on bootcamp for installing future stuff. I read something about Mac Os does not like ntfs - so should I just go for a fat32 partition?

3 - If I don't plan on playing any games via Windows, should I just skip the whole bootcamp idea and run with parallels / fusion instead?

Thanks for sharing any tips / experience you might have..

 

[epoxy5]

Thanks for the inputs both, that helped a lot but also raised a couple of new questions

Let's say I choose Vista, I will need to run NTFS no matter what - right?
I know that the NTFS drive will be read-only for Mac, but what does this mean in real life situations?

Are there normal daily work routines where you would write to the Vista partition - any software that would regular try to do it? It might be a completely stupid question, I just didn't want to make all sorts of installs and then have witness some obvious limitation with the NTFS partition.

I really love the v-lite option, but again I bet there are loads of stuff I should not exclude from the iso in order for Mac to install the OS and make the partition - something I should be aware of here?

Hope you can shed some light on this as well.

Thanks in advance
Thomas

 

[epoxy5]

True, can't say I've heard of anyone installing custom installs of Windows via Bootcamp

LOL I am already forgetting why I wanted to get a Mac in the first place...
I think I will go for a small fat32 partition and windows xp - or even just emulated... It's just for some IE testing and a little finance work, so a lot is not needed.

Thanks again for the nice inputs.

Thomas