About to make the switch and have some questions.

[TweakyDragon]

Hello all,
I'm a lifelong Windows user and I'm about to make the switch to Mac. I am looking at getting the 13" Macbook Pro. Can't decide on buying now or waiting it out a few months but that is another discussion. My main questions relate to Bootcamping a Mac vs running Windows in a VM setting. With Bootcamp what is the most popular/functional way to partition the drive? Can OSX see data on the Windows 7 partition and vise versa? I have more experience working with virtual machines so my only question there is one of performance. I mostly need the Windows 7 to run Visual Studio and some other misc. programming / system admin programs and also some light gaming on the side. Thanks for the help with the advice look forward to being helpful myself in the future

Also a note on more of my reasons for jumping to Mac. I have been noticing more and more Macs show up in my school/professional settings and it is starting to become an issue for my friends who work IT departments. Not that they are necessarily THAT difficult to work with just that a lot of them don't want to take the time to learn how to make it work. So I figure knowing how to work with them shouldn't be that bad of an investment ... plus they are kinda sleek ... Plus it definitely doesn't hurt that a lot of work place processes are moving to a web based environment.

Anyways turning into a long post. Again thanks for making this far and all the help!

 

[Krazy Bill]

Either way... boot camp or virtual you will be fine. (Depends on the game of course).

 

[D.T.]

I’m posting this from Safari (OSX), also running Mail, RD, a bunch of PDFs in Preview (APIs), concurrently with Parallels V6 running Win7 with VS 2010, SQL, IIS and SQL Studio! Runs great and I’m using Coherence mode so the Winders© windows are running on the same desktop as my native OSX windows.

I’m driving an external Viewsonic 24”, and I’m actually using the keyboard/mouse from my old HP DV7 (Logitech K800 and MX Anywhere mouse).

I can share peripherals, files (the Mac FS mounts right “in” the VM as a network share), they share their desktop files. I can also switch to a Window’ed or full screen modes.

My preference was to be able to run the OSX version of an app when available, so I use the native OSX Safari, Mail, iCal, iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, and MS Office, and only hit up the VM for my couple of development needs ... so bootcamp was not something that appealed to me.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

FWIW, my machine is a 15”, HR/AG, 2.3GHz quad i7, 8GB RAM, 7.2K 500GB HDD, 1GB 6750 GPU.

 

[MatP]

It is also possible to run a vm(parallels) from a boot camp install. That way you can run less intensive apps inside mac os or reboot and fire up Windows if you need more performance.

 

[tagz]

I’m posting this from Safari (OSX), also running Mail, RD, a bunch of PDFs in Preview (APIs), concurrently with Parallels V6 running Win7 with VS 2010, SQL, IIS and SQL Studio! Runs great and I’m using Coherence mode so the Winders© windows are running on the same desktop as my native OSX windows.

I’m driving an external Viewsonic 24”, and I’m actually using the keyboard/mouse from my old HP DV7 (Logitech K800 and MX Anywhere mouse).

I can share peripherals, files (the Mac FS mounts right “in” the VM as a network share), they share their desktop files. I can also switch to a Window’ed or full screen modes.

My preference was to be able to run the OSX version of an app when available, so I use the native OSX Safari, Mail, iCal, iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, and MS Office, and only hit up the VM for my couple of development needs ... so bootcamp was not something that appealed to me.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

FWIW, my machine is a 15”, HR/AG, 2.3GHz quad i7, 8GB RAM, 7.2K 500GB HDD, 1GB 6750 GPU.

I need to install Office on Windows.. If I use the virtuals, I guess I will have to install Office twice - once on OSX and once on Virtuals.. right?

Is this the same case with Bootcamp too?

It is a pain as I have buy two versions of Office - Mac and Windows

 

[AfzalivE]

I need to install Office on Windows.. If I use the virtuals, I guess I will have to install Office twice - once on OSX and once on Virtuals.. right?

Is this the same case with Bootcamp too?

It is a pain as I have buy two versions of Office - Mac and Windows

Why do you wanna run office on both?

 

[D.T.]

I’d say if you’re going to own a Mac, get the OSX version of MSO, unless you’ve run into some specific interoperability issues with the Windows vs. OSX versions. In that case, just install the Windows version in your Parallels VM.

Like the poster above, I’m not sure why you’d want to have two versions[?]

A Windows VM and OSX can move files back and forth, so if you’re in Win/VM you can save documents into your ~/Home/Documents folder to access later even if the VM isn’t running - of course, you’d need MSO to actually edit them, but you could certainly Preview them, share them, etc.

You can install MSO in your Windows Bootcamp, and as also pointed out above, you can setup Parallels to use your Bootcamp install as a VM. So you could either hold Option and start into a totally standalone Windows (with your MSO install, etc.), or boot OSX normally, run Parallels, and that same Windows environment is now running concurrently with OSX.

 

[tagz]

Why do you wanna run office on both?

I have specific "Office Add-in" software to be installed on Windows.. so, I definitely need Office on Windows.. it is mandatory for the software I run..

Now, I do not "need" office on mac, but it is a pain to launch VM every time, work on your documents and copy it back to Mac... will be much easier if I can edit them directly on Mac...

Unfortunately, I realize that this means buying Office again for Mac (separately)..

 

[tillsbury]

When properly set up, you (almost) can't notice which operating system your application is running in. I am using VMWare Fusion (which does pretty much the same thing as Parallels), with both a Win7 and a WinXP virtual machine, as I have some old applications that are XP-only I occasionally use. With what VMWare call "Unity" mode (and Parallels calls "Coherence"), the frame of the virtual machine disappears and so you just get a Windows application running on the OSX desktop. You can even have the Windows taskbar on the OSX desktop, which is quite weird. You can associate file types across operating systems so clicking on a document in the Finder in OSX will open it with the appropriate Windows application. Even if your virtual machines are suspended this takes only between 1 and 2 seconds. It's very smooth indeed, and very easy to set up.

You certainly won't need MSOffice in both versions. If you must have Office for Win7, just run that and see how you go. You will be able to set it up such that you can hardly tell the difference.

 

[tagz]

When properly set up, you (almost) can't notice which operating system your application is running in. I am using VMWare Fusion (which does pretty much the same thing as Parallels), with both a Win7 and a WinXP virtual machine, as I have some old applications that are XP-only I occasionally use. With what VMWare call "Unity" mode (and Parallels calls "Coherence"), the frame of the virtual machine disappears and so you just get a Windows application running on the OSX desktop. You can even have the Windows taskbar on the OSX desktop, which is quite weird. You can associate file types across operating systems so clicking on a document in the Finder in OSX will open it with the appropriate Windows application. Even if your virtual machines are suspended this takes only between 1 and 2 seconds. It's very smooth indeed, and very easy to set up.

You certainly won't need MSOffice in both versions. If you must have Office for Win7, just run that and see how you go. You will be able to set it up such that you can hardly tell the difference.

Awesome tip! I have VMWare Fusion too, but I did not know about the "Unity" mode. That helped me a lot. Thanks again!