Best way to run Windows?

[AylmerQc]

I need to install Windows on my daughter's MB. I had it running as such using Boot Camp for a while then somehow she couldn't access it and I can't say why or what went wrong but I'm going to try re-installing it again. Am I better off going the VM Fusion route? Are those the only 2 (Boot Camp and VMF) options?
Just received an email with a special offer of $60 for VM Fusion. Besides the fact she needs her laptop for college work, the offer is only good for a few days so I'd need to sort this out soon.

Thanks

[Dan Millar]

Have a look at Virtual Box - it's very good and it's free! It is a VM like Parallels or Fusion, so it has all the same drawbacks - splits your RAM and graphics hardware, and isn't quite as slick as the others, but I've been using it for almost two years and it just keeps getting better. Boot Camp has improved as well, and can be used with Parallels or Fusion, a trick the Virtual Box still can't do. However, the last time Boot Camp crapped out on me was due to using parallels and Boot Camp on the same partition - eventually it just stopped working. That's when I switched to Virtual Box and haven't really looked back.

Just my 2-cents worth.

Happy Mac'ing!

Dan

[Dan Millar]

Oh, one more thing - if she's playing graphic-intensive games like WoW, VMs aren't going to be fast enough, go back to Boot Camp - but make sure you've downloaded the latest version of your OS and Boot Camp updates, and all should be fine. For example, there were some recent updates just for 13-inch MacBook Pros, 64-bit updates, Windows 7, etc. Here's the URL for Boot Camp downloads at Apple:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/#boot%20camp

Rumour has it Parallels and Fusion have both enabled 3D acceleration, so you might want to check the support forums to see how that's working in real-life...

On that topic - I just installed XPSP2 on my Virtual Box, and to upgrade from there to XP3 and install Microsoft Security Essentials, Quicktime+Safari and the Exploder 8 upgrade took almost 24 hours - 125 MS updates to start with, and that's with Rogers Extreme! I thought Apple installs were bad for updating, but they don't come near MS' retrograde upgrade disaster - why no combo updaters? Anyway, it's up and running.

[ben schmidt]

I need to install Windows on my daughter's MB. I had it running as such using Boot Camp for a while then somehow she couldn't access it and I can't say why or what went wrong but I'm going to try re-installing it again. Am I better off going the VM Fusion route?

The main reason I use VMware Fusion is to avoid having to reboot when I need to run the odd Windows-only application.

But is this a requirement for you and your daughter? If you were finding, until it stopped working, that Boot Camp was meeting your needs, it does have the advantage that it's the route supported by Apple. You could for example save yourself the $60 and just make an appointment at the Apple Rideau Genius Bar, and have them walk you through re-installing your Windows XP SP3 CD or newer OS.

...b

PS. A bonus of the Boot Camp route, is that should you decide later that you're tired of rebooting to switch between OS X and Windows, VMware Fusion, and presumably Parallels, have the option to re-use the Boot Camp partition so that you don't have to re-install Windows just for them.

[AylmerQc]

OK, Virtual Box it is. I installed it and told my daughter to see how she likes it, compare to Boot Camp or, knowing that more and more students now have Macs, to what her classmates have which might be Parallels or VM Fusion.

The install went great and it even saw the old existing partition so that I didn't have to re-install Windows, OS.

Thanks Dudes!