Parallels Desktop / Boot Camp / Darwine running windows XP for MB / MBP

a5y

Has anyone any first hand experience with running any of the following to run Windows XP on either a Macbook or a Macbook Pro?

• Boot Camp
• Crossover Mac
• Darwine
• Parallels Desktop
• Q
• VMware Fusion

I'd be particularly interested in knowing:

• How much RAM you have installed.
• How long you've been using the software to run Windows XP
• How reliably XP has been running this way (crashes, running slow or lack thereof)
• If you've ran Solidworks 2007 using this way, and any details at all of how reliably (or not) that has went. I admit this last one is asking quite a bit...

I'm asking this because I've to consider how I'm going to use my Macbook for CAD when I return to college this September (only 47 days to go according to my countdown widget) and its a toss up between finding a way to run Solidworks Student Edition (a CAD program I've been using for a year) or installing and learning Blender3D (which I don't know jack about, and may not be suitable for exporting detailed tech drawings to a printer anyways).

The idea of forking out a few bob for software to allow me to continue working with what I know isn't too repulsive, but I would like to hear from anyone who's tried it on a machine similar to mine, especially since I've only 1 GB of RAM in my machine and may need to upgrade that too. (The idea of pulling out and replacing RAM isn't something I'm all too keen on, but then again its not like I may have much of an alternative).

440Hz

I use Bootcamp and Parallels on my MBP. Crashes are few and far between and XP performance is generally very impressive.

I installed Bootcamp/XP specially to run Matlab for DSP programming so you can imagine that's a sizeable load on the system. On my current system I have 1GB of RAM and its fine for that environment. I only find my RAM lets me down on OS X when Im running too many Adobe gems!

As for which option to go for, I would say try and think about what your usage is likely to be... if you are going to use it on many occassions for short periods go for parallels, but if you think you will want to run it for a few hours at a time go for Bootcamp. I hate the hassle of restarting but Matlab's performance is certainly better on Bootcamp than Parallels.

I'll post something more helpful when Im less inebriated

triple h

Well i have a new imac, so RAM is no problem for me, at this point in time. I would be ( like you) afraid of pulling out RAM and putting new RAM in.

I downloaded bootcamp at first and i gave 30GB to it. I still have it and i will delete it some day, maybe. Bootcamp is good, it's just i did not like the hassle of shut down and restart, so i bought Parallels.
I use windows as little as possible, so parallels is fine for me. I open my windows and do what i have to do and i am happy when i can close my windows again.
I was a windows user for 8 years before mac and i hate windows now thats why i spend very very little time in there, so my xp has never crashed ( touch wood) because i spend feck all time in there. I buy software for mac now, i would not dream of buying software for my windows xp unless i really really had to.

a5y

440Hz wrote:

I use Bootcamp and Parallels on my MBP. Crashes are few and far between and XP performance is generally very impressive.

This sounds promising. Though seeing as I've managed to live with >256 mb RAM running XP SP2 on my old desktop its not entirely surprising I guess.

As for which option to go for, I would say try and think about what your usage is likely to be... if you are going to use it on many occasions for short periods go for parallels, but if you think you will want to run it for a few hours at a time go for Bootcamp. I hate the hassle of restarting but Matlab's performance is certainly better on Bootcamp than Parallels.

I see. I imagine I'd be using it for at least a few hours at a time, so I may well consider using Bootcamp. as for the inconvenience of the restarts, I think I'll be able to live with it.

I'll post something more helpful when Im less inebriated

CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! :P

meep

You can now configure parallels to use your boot camp partition. I've my MacBookPro (2.0GHz CoreDuo, 2GB RAM) configured this was as well as my iMac (same specs).

It's good because you can have access to windows alongside OSX in parallels for general access or you can boot into windows exclusive for the heavy stuff yet have the same windows config in both cases. Perfect.

Peter

Creamy Goodness

have a macbook with 2gig ram.

installed xp via bootcamp last night, hardest thing was me finding a copy of xp sp2 - it has to be sp2 - not saying i done it illegally but i have a copy of sp1 and had to slipstream it.

runs great.

also meep if what you say about parallels being able to use a bootcamp partition that is great news. i shall be buying parallels as soon as my new harddrive arrives.

meep

cremo

They do a 30 day trial. Download that and try it out to ensure it meets your needs before purchasing.

Peter

Creamy Goodness

will do, but if it does what it says on the tin - ie. allow the use of xp in osx for light work load - then i'm sold

setanta5

Meep, do you find that having Boot Camp partition on the your MBP slows down the boot process? I had bootcamp set up this way and in the end decided it wasn't worth it to play games. Maybe i was doing something wrong but just felt like it took ages to boot up once i instlalled Bootcamp.