Author Topic: Windows what? (Read 3360 times)

Steve_J · « **on:** October 04, 2012, 08:26:55 PM »

This question may have already been answered, but I haven't been here for a while, quite a while actually.

I have a need ( for my garden railroad) to run a couple of programs that are only available for Windows. What version of Windows is the best to use with BootCamp on my MiniMac with Snow Leopard?

Also, can I install it on an external hard drive so it won't tale up space on my Mac?

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #1 on:** October 04, 2012, 08:50:07 PM »

I've never installed Windows on anything, much less a Mac! But I never let inexperience stop me from giving advice! just ask my Grand kids!

At least I'm certain you can use an external drive. Many of us have one with a complete Mac OS on one, just for emergencies and utilities that need to access the internal drive. So that's basically what I'd suggest; create a regular Snow Leopard install on an external drive including Boot Camp and whatever version of Windows you end up with. Then, when you need the Windows OS, just select that external Mac OS in the Startup Disk Pref Panel and boot it up. If you can get a FireWire enclosure it would be much faster than USB 2 (which is all you have I suspect).

tacit · « **Reply #2 on:** October 05, 2012, 02:01:42 AM »

You basically have three options if you want to run Windows on a Mac.

You can run it in Boot Camp.
The advantage: It's free. You can run any version of Windows, including Windows 8 when it comes out.
The disadvantage: You have to set aside a fixed part of your hard drive for it (BootCamp has to reside in a partition). You have to reboot the computer to switch between Windows and mac OS. You can't run a Windows program and a Mac program at the same time, or share data between them.

You can buy a program like Parallels or VMWare Fusion.
The advantage: You can run Windows and Mac OS at the same time. You can copy/paste or share files easily between Windows and Mac programs. You don't need to reboot; you can start and stop Windows whenever you like. You can run any version of Windows, including Windows 8 when it comes out. You install Windows in a virtual drive file, so you can control exactly how much space it takes up on disk. If you get a virus or Windows has a problem, you can just take your backup of the virtual drive file and copy it back to your hard disk.
Disadvantage: Not free. These programs usually cost a hundred bucks or so.

You can use an open-source program like VirtualBox.
The advantage: It's free. You can run Windows and Mac OS at the same time. You can copy/paste or share files easily between Windows and Mac programs. You don't need to reboot; you can start and stop Windows whenever you like. You install Windows in a virtual drive file, so you can control exactly how much space it takes up on disk. If you get a virus or Windows has a problem, you can just take your backup of the virtual drive file and copy it back to your hard disk.
The disadvantage: You can't run whatever version of Windows you like. VirtualBox will run Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7, but doesn't run Windows 8 reliably right now. It might be some time before Windows 8 support is ironed out. Does not support all of the high-end games and graphics programs in Windows, like some complex 3D games; they run sluggishly or not at all.

Highmac · « **Reply #3 on:** October 05, 2012, 04:53:18 AM »

We've got Windows XP Pro in Parallels on the MBP (Snow Leopard). It works well on the very rare occasions it's used (mostly for a Philips Pronto programmable remote control). We got Parallels in a MacUpdate software bundle earlier this year and it's certainly a lot more convenient than Boot Camp since, as Tacit says, you can run it alongside OS X.

Paddy · « **Reply #4 on:** October 05, 2012, 09:25:43 AM »

My recommendation, having tried various things over the past couple of years: Windows 7 on either Parallels or VMWare Fusion. The advantages of VirtualBox that Tacit cited (pasting between Mac and Windows OS' etc.) are the same for Parallels and VMWare Fusion - and with all three, you can also run them in "coherence/unity/seamless" modes which basically add the Windows apps to your Dock and make it quite seamless to switch from a Windows app to a Mac one.

Parallels is $79.95 and VMWare Fusion is $49.95. Neither is $100.

Also, for those of you using VMWare Fusion and thinking of switching to Parallels, there is a $49.95 upgrade offer for switchers.

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/vmwareoffer/

I'm currently using VMWare Fusion 4 and Windows 7. Unless Windows 8 proves to be a whole lot better than the early reports would seem to indicate, I'll probably stick with Win7 for the foreseeable future. As long as it runs the latest Windows browser versions, I'm fine, as I use it almost exclusively for testing websites in the Windows ecosystem. I have never tried VirtualBox because I read too many comparisons early on that indicated that it had far more problems/ran more slowly etc. than either of the paid options. It may be significantly better now, but as far as I know, still lacks some of the features that make Parallels and VMWare Fusion very easy to use.

http://tidbits.com/article/12498

VMWare vs VirtualBox (speed tests)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=arti...sxcpu&num=1
Note: I saw some tests last spring(?) that showed Parallels running faster than VMWare - in some cases, quite significantly.

Highmac · « **Reply #5 on:** October 09, 2012, 10:34:45 AM »

Reviving this thread..... Latest issue of UK's MacFormat has done a comparison review of Fusion 5 and Parallels Desktop 8. The reviewer's conclusion is that both work excellently, right up to Windows 8. Parallels costs more, however, but "scores highly on the ease-of-use scale".

tacit · « **Reply #6 on:** October 09, 2012, 03:13:02 PM »

QUOTE(Highmac @ Oct 9 2012, 03:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Reviving this thread..... Latest issue of UK's MacFormat has done a comparison review of Fusion 5 and Parallels Desktop 8. The reviewer's conclusion is that both work excellently, right up to Windows 8. Parallels costs more, however, but "scores highly on the ease-of-use scale".

A lot of "which one runs better/faster" depends on the specifics of the program you're using.

I used to use parallels, now I use VMware. Parallels seems better tuned for 3D rendering, games (especially graphics intensive games), and the like, as it seems to have put a lot of effort into emulating DirectX and allowing the guest operating system to use the features of the host graphics card--something that's very tricky to do. VMWare allows more fine-grained control over the amount of processing power that guest apps use and seems to work better with multicore processors, at least than the older version of parallels I was using--that may have changed now.

I think the lesson here is to look at reviews to see what kind of apps they were testing, and think about what sorts of apps you'll be using. For most people, I suspect, it won't make much difference either way; most folks probably aren't using Windows to run games like Crysis or programs like Autocad on their Macs, I reckon.

For absolute maximum performance, of course, BootCamp is the way to go.

Highmac · « **Reply #7 on:** October 10, 2012, 02:36:00 AM »

To clarify: I should have said "up to, and including, a pre-release version of Windows 8"

chriskleeman · « **Reply #8 on:** October 10, 2012, 07:52:29 AM »

Hi Steve_j

Using Parallels 7 here, running Lion 10.7.5, and Windows 7 Professional. Works quite well, and certainly runs at more than acceptable speed.

IAW Paddy's and Tacit's remarks for the most part, being an end user here of Parallels. When I made the decision between VMWare Fusion and Parallels, at the time it certainly seemed that Parallels was more consistently maintained than VMWare. I did a lot of digging around for reviews and posted about it here at TS.

That may not be the case now, but I haven't really looked around being pretty happy with Parallels for the most part. Since I bought the program in February, there have been 3 updates, and for what I'm using it for, which is to run a few Windows programs, and mostly, a Java-based beverage ordering system that is web-based, it's been very stable. I did run into a display issue at one point, but reinstalling Parallels tools seemed to cure the problem.

Paddy's pricing is correct, however, occasionally Smith Micro and Nova Development run software bundles on deals, and if you decide on Parallels and are able to wait a bit, you might be able to snag it for $49.95 on one of their bundles.

Also, no matter which program you choose, it may be a good idea to max your RAM out, as any of these programs can be RAM intensive, depending on what you're running on the Windows partition.

HTH,

Chris

Steve_J · « **Reply #9 on:** October 30, 2012, 02:29:58 PM »

I plan on running Windows 7 on my Mac. Does it matter if I get a 32 bit or a 64 bit version?

chriskleeman · « **Reply #10 on:** October 30, 2012, 06:52:07 PM »

Depends on which model you are running... specs please?

CK

Steve_J · « **Reply #11 on:** October 31, 2012, 12:36:53 AM »

Here are my system specs:

Mac Mini with 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Ram memory. Operating system software is OSX version 10.6.8. It has a 320 GByte hard drive internal and an 80 GByte hard drive external.

Highmac · « **Reply #12 on:** October 31, 2012, 06:17:02 AM »

Codeweavers are offering their Crossover software free for today only (though victims of Sandy can register for special arrangements - nice touch!)

It's designed to allow Windows software to run on your Mac without having to run Windows itself. However, reviews on Amazon are mixed, to say the least but if it's free, have you anything to lose?

Be interested to hear the views of anyone here who's used it already.

chriskleeman · « **Reply #13 on:** October 31, 2012, 06:29:19 AM »

According to the specs at Everymac, that Mini has 64-bit architecture, so I'd definitely get the 64-bit version of Windoze.

I would also recommend maxing out your memory or at least going to 4 GB. Activity Monitor shows that Parallels is using around 1.4 GB of RAM and I've only got one program running, Chrome (well, along with an anti-virus program in the background). Your Mini should be able to go to 8 GB.

These are the choices available for that Mini at OWC.

HTH,

Chris

tacit · « **Reply #14 on:** October 31, 2012, 03:44:18 PM »

QUOTE(Highmac @ Oct 31 2012, 11:17 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Codeweavers are offering their Crossover software free for today only (though victims of Sandy can register for special arrangements - nice touch!)

It's designed to allow Windows software to run on your Mac without having to run Windows itself. However, reviews on Amazon are mixed, to say the least but if it's free, have you anything to lose?

Be interested to hear the views of anyone here who's used it already.

Crossover is a commercial version of the free/open source program WINE, which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. Basically, it is a huge set of subroutines that acts like the Windows kernel and Windows API. It makes programs think they are running on Windows without actually loading Windows.

It doesn't work with all Windows apps. It doesn't, for example, emulate hardware and doesn't fully implement DirectX, so some games won't work with it (though many do). It won't work with a lot of system-level utilities.

A lot of folks use WINE as the basis for their own programs, because it's free and open source. Crossover is the free WINE bundled up with a configuration tool and then sold. The free program WineBottler takes Windows apps, wraps them into a package that includes WINE, and then makes them into a single icon that you can click on to run them just like you can with any other app, but it's still in beta.

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Author Topic: Windows what? (Read 3360 times)