“I’d like to do something that I don’t often get to do – discuss how I bought a piece of high-end hardware. I can do this because I recently purchased a MacBook, and have impressions and buying tips to share,” Michael Rau writes in his article “Windows is fabulous on a Mac” for Daily Press.
Rau writes, “First, I should say that, although I’d planned to buy this product, I had intended to wait until early next year, after the release of OSX 10.5. My timeline was accelerated by one simple fact. As part of some recently acquired professional responsibilities, I find it necessary to work on a daily basis in an application that only runs in Windows XP.”
“I could have gone out and bought a highly discounted, but decent quality Windows machine for considerably less money. But since this application is the only thing I have to use Windows to work with, I decided to go ahead and pull the ripcord and buy what I wanted anyway,” Rau writes.
“We’ve talked previously in this column about how to set up one of the newer Intel-based Macs to run Windows. You need either Boot Camp, which is free from Apple, or Parallels Desktop, which is $80,” Rau writes. “Running Windows through Parallels Desktop is much more desirable because, as opposed to using Boot Camp, you don’t have to completely reboot your system to switch from one operating system to the other. The other component to this is of course, Windows. You have to buy a licensed copy separately.”
“If you’re going this route, I’d like to share a dirty little secret with you. I paid less than half the retail cost for a licensed copy of Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2… Go to a shopping site compiler, such as pricegrabber.com or Froogle, and in the search field, type: ‘Windows XP Pro SP2 OEM,’ and you should have several sites which offer OEM versions of Windows,” Rau writes.
“I’ve been running Windows on my MacBook for over a month now, using it almost daily, and I swear, I have never worked on a machine on which Windows ran faster or with more stability. I have no idea why,” Rau writes. “I wish I could do all my work in OSX, but if I have to work in Windows, I’m glad I can do so in an environment, and on a machine, I trust.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You must first embrace before you can extinguish.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple Macs can run more software than Windows PCs – October 30, 2006
Parallels updates Desktop for Mac – October 12, 2006
Mossberg offers advice on switching from Windows to Mac – October 05, 2006
Embrace and Extinguish in action: TechIQ’s ‘The VAR Guy’ dumps Windows, switches to Mac OS X – September 25, 2006
Apple Boot Camp’s ‘Windows Insecurity Blanket’ helps buyers decide to switch to Macs – May 19, 2006
Macs that run Windows will calm potential switchers’ irrational fears – April 06, 2006
Dude, you got a Dell? What are you, stupid? Only Apple Macs run both Mac OS X and Windows! – April 05, 2006
Intel-based Macs running both Mac OS X and Windows will be good for Apple – June 10, 2005
Windows really is great, isn’t it!
To mis-quote Forest Gump:
“Windows is, as Windows goes…”
@ Yep
Yes, Windows IS great… for me to poop on.
MDN word: “has” as in neither Vista nor Zune has a chance at success versus the awesomeness that is Apple.
Yep No, Yep NO, NO, NO.
Windows is shit.
Umm, isn’t running an OEM version of Windows against the EULA?
Try to install Final Cut Studio and Windows XP on a Macbook in addition to the pre-installed iLife and Tiger OS. There simply is no hard drive space left. Mac hard drives should have more capacity out of the box. There is no reason the average Macbook cannot have a 100 gig drive except for someone somwhere lining their pockets. Apple pushes the envelope, but forgot about hard drive space and until recently, enough RAM out of the box.
I just picked up a new 2.33 GHz DP MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo and Windows XP SP2 OEM.
If I set up boot camp, and install Windows on the separate partition, am I going to have to install it again on my Mac partition for Parallels? Or have they improved the virtualization software so that I need only install it once?
I mean, I think I might sometimes want to boot to XP – for games – but otherwise would be happy with Parallels.
What’s the scoop?
Windows box is great for wiping your ass in the great outdoors
rainy day, good question unfortunately i dont know the answer, i would obviously try the parallels website/send them an email.
parallels is fine for my use though, and parallels compresses xp so it doesnt take up so much space.
“Umm, isn’t running an OEM version of Windows against the EULA?”
Umm, who cares?
to rainy day…MS will make you purchase TWO copies of Windows. What a company…
So is downloading binaries from a newsgroup and an activation crack from…
er… nothing.
MW: ‘you’ (can’t prove anything)
Newmanstein,
Where did you get your information about the MacBook Pro with under 100G drives? The smallest drive shipping for them is 120G and up to 200G drives are available BTO. Get your facts straight.
@ rainy Day
http://www.macwindows.com/bcreview.html#2
Thanks to those who responded. I found my answere here, in the Arstechnica review:
“Keep in mind that if you intend to run Windows XP in Boot Camp as well as Parallels, you’ll need two separate licensed copies or else you’ll find yourself on the phone with MS a lot, switching the license activation back and forth.”
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/parallels.ars
LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son,
You’re funny. You just said “get your facts straight” to Newmanstein yet you miquoted him/her by saying MacBook Pro vs. MacBook and perhaps that makes your hard drive assumptions wrong too.
Get YOUR facts straight!
Newmanstein,
Yeah man, It took me like 5 sec to check the min drive size on the Apple Store.
C’Mon Man! You applying for a Job with the Enderle Group or something?
Apple has done a perfect job of positioning Windows as the legacy crap that they’ll help you migrate off of.
-jcr
Rainy Day:
The simple answer to your question is yes, you have to install it on your Mac partition to use Parallels. Boot Camp and Parallels are two completely different ways of running Windows on your Mac.
Parallels is basically an application that pretends to be hardware, thus allowing you to run OS X and Windows at the same time, albeit at a cost of system resources. You must have adequate RAM for this to work smoothly. With 2GB you can run both OSs on your machine without any perceptible performance issue. I run Parallels on a MBP and a mini; and they both work work great. Even video works!
Games are another issue. Boot Camp installs Windows natively like any other PC and is the only real option for gaming. Hard drive space can quickly become an issue with a MBP.
Actually, buying and running an OEM version of Windows is not against the EULA. Not legally, anyway. Read the whole thing and check the applicable laws. I’m sure if it was illegal, companies such as Newegg (a distributor of OEM versions of Windows), would get in massive trouble, as well. Luckily, they have not, and will not, get in trouble. Nor will the end user.
What? How is running Windows on ANY machine ever fabulous?
How can you call your OS windows, when there is no transparency at all.
Jon, it’s like banging your head against a wall. You know you can stop anytime, and it will feel sooo good when you do!
Windows XP Pro SP2 OEM
I wonder what the app is that has to be run in Windows? Most likely HALO 2.
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Yeah or M$ Flight sim
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