Mac questions

doublehelix2 · 20 Jan 2008 at 18:48

I'm hoping that someone can give me some help with a few questions I have. I'm thinking of getting a mac, but I will still need to use windows a lot. I heard there was something you can use to allow you to run both, but I don't know what the drawbacks are. Is it like running it within mac os or more like dual booting?

Will_3rd · 20 Jan 2008 at 18:53

you can run both at the same time by running Windows virtualized, won't run at native speeds though

or dual booting which will run natively with little problem

theheyes · 20 Jan 2008 at 19:37

VM drawbacks are you need a lot of RAM, and anything that requires any hardware acceleration doesn't run that well.

Also worth noting that a VM install "legally" requires a separate license. i.e you can't run Windows in a VM AND BootCamp on the same license key.

meghatronic · 20 Jan 2008 at 19:49

theheyes said:
VM drawbacks are you need a lot of RAM, and anything that requires any hardware acceleration doesn't run that well.

Also worth noting that a VM install "legally" requires a separate license. i.e you can't run Windows in a VM AND BootCamp on the same license key.

Unless you use parallels with a bootcamp partition? I thought...?

Also, how much RAM is needed to run something like Office 2007 on OSX.

bigredshark · 20 Jan 2008 at 20:05

jdickerson said:
Unless you use parallels with a bootcamp partition? I thought...?

Also, how much RAM is needed to run something like Office 2007 on OSX.

I think you'd get by fine with 2GB, but for the price right now, 4GB makes sense.

What makes even more sense is office 2008 for mac...

clv101 · 20 Jan 2008 at 20:08

doublehelix2 said:
...but I will still need to use windows a lot.

Are you sure? What do you have in mind? It might turn out you don't 'need' Windows nearly as much as you think.

Xenoxide · 20 Jan 2008 at 20:47

All new Macs (ie. Those with Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard" installed) come with an application called Boot Camp.

Boot Camp allows you to repartition your hard drive and start the installation of another OS (Such as Windows). It will also burn a driver disc for you to get all your hardware like webcams, graphics cards, etc up and running.

Boot Camp is "real" dual booting. When you power on the computer, it will give you a choice of OS's to start. So you get the full hardware performance in your chosen OS. There is no emulation.

There are third party virtualization technologies out there (VM Ware, Parallels, etc) which allow you to install other OS's and run them from within Mac OS, so you have two OS's running at once. This has the benefit of not needing to reboot when you need to use another OS.

Personally, I prefer Boot Camp as I actually "feel" like I'm within Windows or Mac OS.

meghatronic · 20 Jan 2008 at 20:49

bigredshark said:
What makes even more sense is office 2008 for mac...

I already have licenses for XP/Vista/Office 2007 - so it'll be free.

Plus, I use 2k7 on my Windows machine.

bigredshark · 20 Jan 2008 at 22:33

jdickerson said:
I already have licenses for XP/Vista/Office 2007 - so it'll be free.

Plus, I use 2k7 on my Windows machine.

In my opinion you'd be crazy to use office in vmware/parallels longterm. It would really hurt my productivity I know.

doublehelix2 · 20 Jan 2008 at 23:53

This may sound really stupid, and it probably is, but if you install xp on a mac on dual boot is it still able to get viruses and infect it?

meghatronic · 21 Jan 2008 at 07:17

bigredshark said:
In my opinion you'd be crazy to use office in vmware/parallels longterm. It would really hurt my productivity I know.

How come?

bigredshark · 21 Jan 2008 at 09:06

jdickerson said:
How come?

Because virtualising an application is always goign to be a bit slower. You can't just pop up excel quickly to look at a document, you have to wait for the VM to boot. Copy and paste can be a bit of an issue between the VM and native OS (not always and I haven't used parallels yet but I have problams with VM ware)