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best procedure for installing Windoze?

K

keevill

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 7, 2010
45
0
I regret to say that I have to install Windoze for very occasional use on my Macbook Air 128GB.
My questions are :
Is it better to install as a dual boot using Bootcamp ( which I realise requires a re-boot ) or to use Parallels for virtual operation.?
What is the best ( least problematical ) ver of Win to install ?
I'm thinking Win7.
Thanks in advance.
-keevill-
 
Neolithium

Neolithium

macrumors 6502a
Jun 4, 2010
563
0
Wherever the army needs me.
Can't answer that without know what you need to use in Windows. Most things will work fine with a virtual environment though. Some gaming, etc, or highly intensive apps that could suck the RAM up, I'd be leaning towards a bootcamp install.
 
W

wgnoyes

macrumors 6502
Jul 20, 2011
287
33
VMWare Fusion, running windows as a guest machine. It's only $49 right now, and that's a bargain for the best virtual machine out there. Bootcamp makes you pick between booting win and osx and I don't like partitioning hard drives like that. Running windows as a guest machine still leaves you access to your mac operating system.
 
C

cgallant725

macrumors newbie
Aug 9, 2010
28
0
Vmware Also give you the option to boot your windows partiton as a virtual machine when needed, giving you the best of both world. Thats what I personally do on my MBA and MBP
 
N

newdeal

macrumors 68030
Oct 21, 2009
2,510
1,769
...

parallels will also use the bootcamp partition to load windows. Its a good way to do it but if you use the virtual machine instead it dynamically resizes but if you use bootcamp you need to set the partition size in advance
 
K

keevill

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 7, 2010
45
0
Neolithium said:
Can't answer that without know what you need to use in Windows. Most things will work fine with a virtual environment though. Some gaming, etc, or highly intensive apps that could suck the RAM up, I'd be leaning towards a bootcamp install.
Click to expand...

I guess I should have given more information about the useage of Win.
I will probably only use certain network management utilities and some vpn access progs which only run under Win.
I NEVER play games. The biggest program I will use is Dragon Naturally Speaking.
This one may be the resource grabber.
-keevill-
 
M

monkeybagel

macrumors 65816
Jul 24, 2011
1,141
61
United States
keevill said:
I guess I should have given more information about the useage of Win.
I will probably only use certain network management utilities and some vpn access progs which only run under Win.
I NEVER play games. The biggest program I will use is Dragon Naturally Speaking.
This one may be the resource grabber.
-keevill-
Click to expand...

VMware Fusion works great and supports Lion fullscreen apps nicely. I have never used Dragon in a VM, so I can't say for that. I do know that the Cisco VPN Client, VMware vSphere console, and other network management programs work excellent in Fusion/Windows Server 2003. I have been very impressed.
 
E

ethics101

macrumors regular
Apr 16, 2011
209
0
I don't understand the virtualization. It is not as smooth as people claim it to be. Create a 25GB partition and install via bootcamp.
 
K

Kyllle

macrumors 6502
Apr 25, 2011
290
0
Not to hijack your thread, but how exactly does one go about installing Windows on a machine without a DVD drive or external drive?

Can you download it from somewhere? What about Remote Disc (use another computer's optical drive to send the data over wifi to your copmuter), will that work for installing an OS?
 
0dev

0dev

macrumors 68040
Dec 22, 2009
3,947
24
127.0.0.1
If you use virtualisation software, don't bother paying for anything, get VirtualBox instead, it's free.
 
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