Boot Camp on New MBA--Which version of Windows?

[dreamwave6]

Hi everyone,

I presently have a 13" MacBook Pro (First-Gen Unibody from Late 2008) running Windows XP in Boot Camp and Snow Leopard. I'm about to buy a new 13" MacBook Air to replace my MBP and will need to install Windows in Boot Camp (for work and for gaming).

Which version(s) of Windows can I install in Boot Camp on a new MBA? I heard that only Windows 7 can be installed but would like to verify if this is correct.

Thanks,

Andrew

 

[rotobadger]

Hi everyone,

I presently have a 13" MacBook Pro (First-Gen Unibody from Late 2008) running Windows XP in Boot Camp and Snow Leopard. I'm about to buy a new 13" MacBook Air to replace my MBP and will need to install Windows in Boot Camp (for work and for gaming).

Which version(s) of Windows can I install in Boot Camp on a new MBA? I heard that only Windows 7 can be installed but would like to verify if this is correct.

Thanks,

Andrew

Was in the Apple store yesterday in Chicago and, when I asked about Bootcamp on the MBA, I was told that you can only install Windows 7. Nothing earlier.

Just as a side note though: I have Windows 7 32 bit installed on my MBP and I can run all of my older XP friendly programs with no problem. Some of these did not run on the Win7 64 bit.

Hope that helps...

 

[WardC]

I was able to install Windows XP in bootcamp on my Mac Pro. I suspect it will work on the MacBook Air as well.

My real question is -- will Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 work?? That is what I really want to know!!

 

[snorkelman]

As above Windows 7 is the only supported option, whether you can persuade it to install XP (given the 13" MBP has C2D and same graphics) remains to be seen

It might be just a case of Apple deciding their going to depreciate earlier versions of Windows - which would be a bit of a shame as there's little an XP box cant run (and with a much smaller footprint) that W7 can. Whereas there's some old gnarly but extremely important stuff that Win7 just cant run in a month of Sundays

(e.g. pretty much all the access control systems we deal with at work are completely incompatible with the changes to background services that kicked in subsequent to XP)

Or it might be that there's a serious incompatibility issue with the SDD side of things that means they absolutely positively don't want folks booting XP natively outside of a VM and having it run riot over them.

 

[elwood58]

The only supported install is Windows 7 32 Bit. If you want to run old gnarly XP stuff, make sure you install Win 7 Pro or Ultimate, as only those two have the ability to run the XP VM option.

I am sure the geeks here could make nearly anything work, but that is the supported approach. I have found Win 7 via Bootcamp to be a trouble free experience that "just works".

 

[ewhite]

I've run 32bit versons of XP, Vista, and 7, as well as 64-bit versions of Vista and 7.

Best performance combo outside of XP (older OS clearly, a bit lighter) is 7 Professional 64-bit. Although if you only opt for the 2GB RAM setup than 32bit is all you need as one of the main reasons you would choose 64-bit is to address more than 3.5GB of RAM from the OS.

Notes: x86 usually means 32bit, and x64 usually means 64-bit for your reference.

Newegg has great pricing on 7 retail copies if you need. I recommend Pro, Ultimate is somewhat overkill.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions