Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Best virtualization option for Macbook?

agentphish

agentphish

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 7, 2004
1,140
0
My friend is getting a current standard config macbook 2.4 and we're upping to 4gigs of ram.

She wants to run Windows, for compatibility with some things in Med School this fall. I'm pretty unfamiliar w/ virtualization thus far as I still only have PPC machines. EDIT: She will also more than likely want to play some PC Only games occasionally. I know she currently plays WoW.

I've heard of the 3 options, Bootcamp, Parallels, VM Fusion.

Which is best for her MacBook? I have seen Parallels on a 17" MBP one time when I checked out a guy's machine who I used to work with. It seemed really slick.

Recommendations?

Thanks
 
From seeing demonstrations I can say VMWare, it's effortless and efficient.
 
There is also the completely free VirtualBox from Sun MicroSystems. Worth a look.
 
Depends on the Windows software she needs to run. Some software doesn't play nice under virtualization. If it can be made to work than VMware is the way to go, IMO. Otherwise a combination of bootcamp and VMware is also good, provided she can spare the disk space.
 
i personally run parallels and love it. It runs seamlessly and runs great. i love it
 
Thanks so far seems like VMWare and Parllels are the overall favorites...

I made an edit to the above post that may change that...with gaming, would bootcamp be the best thing?
 
agentphish said:
Thanks so far seems like VMWare and Parllels are the overall favorites...

I made an edit to the above post that may change that...with gaming, would bootcamp be the best thing?
Click to expand...
WoW runs quite well under OSX. If any of the games, however, require 3D graphics then bootcamp is the way to go as the virtualization engines are still very early in the 3D graphics stage.
 
Ok. I'm trying to get a better handle on what she'll play as far as games go.

How think a 20 gig Windows XP partition would be adequate for BootCamp?
 
agentphish said:
Ok. I'm trying to get a better handle on what she'll play as far as games go.

How think a 20 gig Windows XP partition would be adequate for BootCamp?
Click to expand...
Probably too small. My recommendation is 40-50GB minimum. Many of the newer games take 4-6GB each these days. If she only has one or two big games and not much else she could get away with 20GB but only just.
 
I prefer Parallels and it supports Boot Camp partition Windows installations.

If she want to run games, I suggest just booting into the Windows Boot Camp partition. For the other apps, she can run Parallels (using her Boot Camp Windows installation) side by side with MacOSX.
 
agentphish said:
If she wasn't going to game, parallels would be best?
Click to expand...

It's a matter of opinion. You can download demos of both (they will give your temporary keys) and try them out, then decide which one you like better.

I'm also saying that she can still play games, but she would get better performance by just booting into Windows rather than running it virtualized.
 
Cool. Thanks guys.

I can't wait till I get my own Intel machine, so I don't feel dumb about newer macs. I've had limited experience. Thank god they don't change OS X that badly each time... At least I can still run Leopard on my Powerbook.

I'm going to wait for Nehelem and hopefully a MBP redesign I think.
 
Virtual pc with windows 7 in boot camp

Has anyone tried to load windows 7 with boot camp and then trying to see if virtual pc will work?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back