"Sizing" a Winderz partition

[RHPConsult]

. . . since RNKiii told me there had been a posting herein on the very topic, but I don't seem to be able to search it out.

To celebrate my 2d successful cataract surgery on Thursday last   , I'm picking-up a new 27" iMac tomorrow. (As good a reason as any!) Secondarily, I want my daughter to graduate – from the now aging Igloo I gave her a number of years ago – to my year-old 24 " iMac/Intel. Especially for SnowLeopard, iSight, and particularly iPhoto '09. What whe does with '06 is amazing, so I can hardly wait.

Moreover, since my son-in-law needs Windows for his work, I thought it would be helpful to reformat the 24-incher's HD to accommodate an XP partition "at home" - which I understand that's what it takes – plus whatever is the "enabling" SW.

I'm hoping to be able to set an adequate WIN partition in the 250 internal GBs available. What do you gurus out there suggest?

She presently has almost 3 TG in external storage.

And (though this might be unleashing a Coke vs Pepsi torrent of opinion) who wins the Parallels vs BaseCamp contest?

Sorry, ABD, no Dr. Pepper!

Thank you.

[Paddy]

QUOTE

And (though this might be unleashing a Coke vs Pepsi torrent of opinion) who wins the Parallels vs BaseCamp contest?

VMWare Fusion perhaps.

I just paid for it and downloaded it - still haven't installed. I also got Winderz 7 on Friday (home premium, OEM) since I kinda have to keep up with the times doing web sites. I've still got Parallels 2 and XP installed on my MacBook Pro.

I made the switch to VMWare because (1)I've read a lot of raves about it from people who'd used both it and Parallels and (2)They offer educational pricing to parents of K-12 students and that was cheaper than the update to Parallels 3. Wish more companies would offer ed discounts to parents!

Anyway, the Boot Camp vs. VMWare/Parallels question really boils down to what you're going to do with it and how much you're planning on using it. For me, I'm just firing it up, checking my web designs in the various Windows browsers and occasionally opening Publisher files and saving 'em to PDF. Having to do that by rebooting into Boot Camp would be a major pain!! Now, I can change web page code, upload it and then in a matter of seconds, see what it looks like (and behaves like) in IE 8. With Boot Camp, it would be a matter of minutes - shutting down whatever I was running on the Mac side, restarting in Boot Camp, firing up IE 8...and then if there were still issues, I'd have to do it all over again after rebooting and editing on the Mac side. No thanks!

But - if I wanted to run some heavy-duty Windows only application - say AutoCAD or something, I'd probably use Boot Camp.

I'm playing with the idea of having a Boot Camp partition just in case - you can do both:

http://forums.techarena.in/operating-systems/1167032.htm
http://excitedcuriosity.wordpress.com/2007...ows-activation/ (VMWare)
http://lifehacker.com/267905/virtualize-an...ows-on-your-mac (Parallels)

[RHPConsult]

Just splendid, Paddy. Thank you so much.

Those 3 citations were comprehensive, instructive, and not a little bit amusing.

I will go with 25 gigs and let the gentleman in question do what he wishes after he reads your post and those links. He's a graduate of the Naval Academy, so I don't anticipate he'll have any difficulty, and I will know i gave them the easiest set-up to start.

Again, I am grateful to you.

[tacit]

Yep, the BootCamp vs. supervisor software (PArallels, Fusion, etc) really does come down to what you'll do.

Any software that needs direct access to hardware--including high-end 3D games, high-end rendering software, and so on--will run much better under BootCamp. With BootCamp, you boot "pure" Windows. You're not running OS X at all.

Any situation where you want to run Mac and Windows apps side by side, or trade data easily between Mac and Windows, or use the same files with Mac and Windows, you're better off with a VM supervisor like Parallels or Fusion.

I use Parallels, myself. It works fine for light gaming, for productivity apps, for Internet, for Office, and that kind of stuff. I would not try to run AutoCAD or new, modern 3D games in it, but for 95% of the stuff out there it's awesome.

[ClayEM]

I prefer VMWare Fusion over Parallels for a couple reasons. Mainly because it makes 40GB the Windows size vs 32GB made by Parallels. Secondly, it is receptive to more OS versions than Parallels. Operations wise they both do their job well...running either one alongside the Mac OS is much more convenient than using BootCamp, for my purposes.

[RHPConsult]

As usual . . . a fine TeeEss "Seminar" on a topic I would not normally have wanted to try to understand.

Thanks to all.