Bootcamp Reliability Vs. Parallels

MarkyMark

MarkyMark

MarkyMark

Soldato
Joined
9 May 2003
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Hi all,

Just wondered if any of you mac guru's could give me a bit of advice. I'm currently looking to stick XP on my macbook (Leopard 10.5) because I don't want to fork out a few hundred quid on a new laptop, and I have a spare legit copy of XP in my desk collecting dust. THe main reason for needing XP is the need to run Sage accounts software.

Never wanting to polute my mac in the past i've never really looked into this but unfortunately now the time has come. It seems Parallels has a cost associated to it and from what i can tell the Bootcamp option would be free.

However, how reliable is bootcamp and does it depend on Mac OS running on the laptop? What happens if my mac partition were to fail? Do I then lose my windows partition too?

Additionally does anyone have any do's or don'ts when dabbling with either of the above?

Massive thanks in advance all.
 
wow, thanks for the big replies guys. Also rp2000 thanks for the free virtualisation link. Free is always a good price so might try that anyhow and see how it works. I guess the main reason for my paranoia regarding bootcamp is that I had a stick of RAM fail me earlier in the year, and for some bizzar reason it took down the whole of OSX. I was shocked considering the night before it shut down happily. Never once had this with a Windows box. So as much as I love OSX I can't help but worry that its always a timebomb waiting for the ram to fail again and kill everything.

Therefore, if this were to happen and become unusable could I still use XP. rp2000 you mentioned that OSX has to be working. What if it failed, and I had to completely re-install OSX? Could I get it back then?

I realise that any virtualised machines depend entirely on OSX so If I go that route it is a risk I would have to take. However, if the bootcamp option is more solid and not reliant on OSX then Im also torn that way too :S

MacRS4, to answer your question as to what I need it for: I want to use it for Sage Accounts only pretty much. If I went the virtualisation way then all e-mail boxes + skype remains native in OSX. However since I use an imam server anyway it is just a case of install skype on a windows bootcamp partition and re-configuring thunderbird. Either way is not a problem.

Hope this is answering what you are asking. If you need mroe info from me, let me know and I will try to explain further.

Thanks again both :)
 
Thanks again for all the replies everyone :)

Another question though. If I used bootcamp from what i'm reading if xp is installed as Fat32 then Mac os can see it and write to it. Therefore you can dump files from your mac onto the Bootcamp pc. However, is there a way of seeing back to the Mac or is this a one way process?
 
Evening all, or morning depending on whether you are getting up or staying up late :p

Just to let you all know i'm going to be trailing both methods at shortly i.e. VM and Bootcamp but am starting with the VM (Virtual Box) method first. Having some problems at present though :( Something i've not been unable to do with Virtual Box as of yet is get the VGA driver working or also "Base layer driver" as shown in the device manager. I've tried using the bootcamp drivers from my mac disk but it doesn't let them load.

Any ideas anyone? I was under the impression that all Windows drivers were supplied on the mac OSX disk.

Also, for the record, its a 2008 Macbook Black running XP Pro SP2.

Thanks for ya help all :)
 
Not that i've seen, but then saying that I'm a Virtualbox noob at present :) I realise that the 3d stuff was going to be nothing like if I was using bootcamp. However, I was hoping that the resolution would at least match my mac, even if it was a virtual window. Am I asking too much of it?
 
Hey up, sorry for the delay in replying.......been on holiday :D

Anyway, just checking your uploads now and seeing if I can fix the problem too. Thanks for your help MacRS4. I'll report back soon to let you know if it fixed it or not :)


EDIT: Hmmm when I follow the links you posted I get to a page that says "ForMarkyMark" but displays no photos. Is this something I'm doing wrong?

Sorry to be a hassle all over again :D
 
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