Boot Camp, CrossOver, Parallels, VMware Fusion in three bullet points each!

[t19880821]

Boot Camp is the best out of all those. Emulators are really buggy. And for CrossOver, have you seen their compatibility list? It's a joke. If you want to use windows, then you might as well use the real deal.

Of course, it all depends what you even NEED windows for. I saw people mentioning games, and if that's what you need windows for then Boot Camp is the best solution. If you just need it for Microsoft Word (btw, they have word for mac) then emulating windows is fine. None of those are as good as truly running windows.

 

[realtime4d]

As for using MS Office, I have both 2004 for mac and 2003 for my vmware xp instance. I actually prefer using the 2003 version, as it's "friendly", more forgiving, and much more predictable behavior.

The only buggy-ness I've encountered worth mentioning is attempting to use the Cisco VPN client in the VM. Resulted in VM bluescreens. Running the same VPN client on the mac solved the problem.

Of course for native hardware execution, it'd be hard to use anything but bootcamp. For flexibility and stability in a virtual machine, vmware fusion is the way to go.

 

[imws]

As for using MS Office, I have both 2004 for mac and 2003 for my vmware xp instance. I actually prefer using the 2003 version, as it's "friendly", more forgiving, and much more predictable behavior.

The only buggy-ness I've encountered worth mentioning is attempting to use the Cisco VPN client in the VM. Resulted in VM bluescreens. Running the same VPN client on the mac solved the problem.

Of course for native hardware execution, it'd be hard to use anything but bootcamp. For flexibility and stability in a virtual machine, vmware fusion is the way to go.

FWIW I had no issues running Cisco VPN Client, Cisco IP Communicator, on a Windows XP VM session within Fusion on the MacBook Pro. It ran quite well actually.

 

[EricaV]

Still trying to figure out the parrallels vs VM fusion thang

Just jumping into the fray- I'm an exited new macbook owner and just installed windows XP in bootcamp- yay !!! I think eventually I'm definitely going to need a non-reboot option like the virtulization guys.

My needs are pretty basic- heavy outlook user with synching to a PDA/smartphone needed, and simple quickbooks stuff on the windows side I'll probably also use some DVD copy programs and Adobe CS2 Contribute since I have Windows version. I'm easing myself all the way over to Mac with everything else. I would think I'll probably want to bring stuff from the mac side to outlook a fair amount- mailing all kinds of attachments etc. etc. So I did the FAT32 thang so I can go totally back and forth. Not into computer games.

a few detail questions- are there limited amounts of RAM that the virtulization programs can run ?- I got 4gigs of RAM and a 250 gig HD so I could be speedy but hmmmmmm can I only use 2 gigs anyway ?

can my documents files be accessed from both sides ? I don't want to keep up 2 sets of data.


The corruption and crashing stories from both fusion and parrallels freak me out ! But I've also heard plenty of positive reports from the other's too- I was going to try trial versions of both VM fusion and parrallels, but I'm thinking twice now- me don't need crashing

as an amateur semi-geek I found this article really helpful.

http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.02/VirtualizationBenchmark/


Any thoughts welcome

Erica V

 

[DezineJunkie]

RE: Unistall Windows XP Russian language pack

ive been reading the thread but have some questions.
I have Parallels Desktop installed on my MAC intell. V 10.5.5
I installed a Russian V of Windows XP. Thinking i could read some of it, its very heavy with Russian and i cant read any of it. Im not a windows user so im not familiar with the desktop or the software. after installing Parallels it opened fine, but how do i DEINSTALL? I cant imagine dragging the files to the trash will do it. it took about 20 min of crunching to install.
I hope one of you can tell me how to do it. BTW i want to reinstall an English V of XP or Vista Business.

 

[DaveF]

I have Parallels Desktop installed on my MAC intell. V 10.5.5
I installed a Russian V of Windows XP. Thinking i could read some of it, its very heavy with Russian and i cant read any of it. Im not a windows user so im not familiar with the desktop or the software. after installing Parallels it opened fine, but how do i DEINSTALL? I cant imagine dragging the files to the trash will do it. it took about 20 min of crunching to install.
I hope one of you can tell me how to do it. BTW i want to reinstall an English V of XP or Vista Business.

Why would you install the Russian version of Windows if you don't read Russian?

Parallels should have an option to delete a virtual machine. Then uninstall Parallels with either its uninstaller or drag Parallels to the trash, like with any other Mac App.

 

[EricaV]

Windows and parallels

Wish I could be of more technical help... but I will share that I had a really problematic time trying to uninstall parallels.

first of all, after installing windows XP (service pack 2) in bootcamp it worked perfectly, then the install of parallels made my bootcamp/windows partition un-bootable and I was not able to repair the windows problem in the partition.

Parallel's uninstall program did not fully uninstall or allow my bootcamp partition to work again. Moving other files from my desktop etc. into trash (in addition to using uninstall) didn't do the trick either. Unfortunately I ended up having to repartition bootcamp and reinstall Windows XP (and everything else).

This whole experience lead me to say bye-bye to parallels and I've been extremely happy with Windows and VMware fusion.

 

[1visitor]

Does anybody know if any of the programs below run under Crossover ?

- Adobe Audition
- ACDsee
- Opera (Windows version)
- Canopus Procoder
- DVDlab
- ConvertXtoDVD
- VirtualDub
- Sony Vegas
- BetterJPEG
- Subtitle Workshop
- KMplayer
- SmartRipper
- Nero