Any special reason to choose Boot Camp over virtualization for the new iteration of the MacBook? It seems like the Core M should work well with Windows 8.1, but I haven't gone totally Mac in a while (see my sig) and now that I've pulled the trigger on the new 1.2/512 I've got a bit of separation anxiety related to some of my more specialized software.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Boot Camp, Virtualization, Neither?
- Thread starter Dekimasu
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I chose using a virtual machine because I only need Windows for a handful of things and that way I don't need to reboot my machine to get to it. Also, I like the ability to share files between Win and Mac sides without any special software (besides the VM software, of course). And the flexible storage usage is nice, especially on my MBA which doesn't have a ton of internal storage.
Bootcamp: Running windows natively. Will provide the best performance. The downside is that you'll boot out of OS X.
Virtualization: Running windows within OS X, advantage is that you don't have to reboot out of OS X. Slower, no direct access to the hardware.
It all depends on what you're looking to do, I suspect running parallels or Vmware will be a bit sluggish in the Core M. I'd opt for bootcamp myself.
Virtualization: Running windows within OS X, advantage is that you don't have to reboot out of OS X. Slower, no direct access to the hardware.
It all depends on what you're looking to do, I suspect running parallels or Vmware will be a bit sluggish in the Core M. I'd opt for bootcamp myself.
unless you're planning to run games or something else that's graphically intensive I'd always go with a VM over a dual boot setup as first option and see if its good enough.
Will only cost around an hour or so of your time to download 30 day trial of parallels or VMWare Fusion and throw Win 7 or 8 onto it. If it does what you want at a speed thats acceptable then your sorted, if its not up to snuff delete the files and then take the plunge to dual boot.
Only other thing I would say is that if you plan to try both (Parallels and Fusion) give them both a fair crack of the whip by installing Windows cleanly each time i.e. dont bother trying to convert a VM from one to the other
Will only cost around an hour or so of your time to download 30 day trial of parallels or VMWare Fusion and throw Win 7 or 8 onto it. If it does what you want at a speed thats acceptable then your sorted, if its not up to snuff delete the files and then take the plunge to dual boot.
Only other thing I would say is that if you plan to try both (Parallels and Fusion) give them both a fair crack of the whip by installing Windows cleanly each time i.e. dont bother trying to convert a VM from one to the other
This is a good point--thanks for reminding me about the trials. I'm mostly concerned with OCR software that technically is available for OSX, but I don't get that free from my institution, whereas they will give me a copy of Windows for free and will discount the virtualization software to something considerably cheaper than the OCR software. I'll try virtualization first and then decide.
Is it important to have your SSD relatively clean before using Boot Camp, or can I already have transferred all of my stuff to the computer first?
Honestly couldn't tell you - been looong time since I bothered with bootcamp, VMs take care of what I need.
That said I'd have thought the less chock full of stuff your drive was the easier time bootcamp utility would have creating its partition
Since bootcamp will partition the drive, if its nearly full the process may not be able to do the actual partition.
----------
As mentioned, VMware Fusion is able to do this as well and my personal opinion is that Fusion is more stable then Parallels. I'd recommend Vmware over Parallels.
Bootcamp on external SSD if i achieve it but its not really user-friendly, tuto seems to be a bit tricky 
I dont really need Windows as primary OS
But at home, i need it for few softwares and games
you can buy SSD for less than 99$ (250 GB) + external hard drive case with UASP for 25$
That's for me the best way to use Win
+ No internal partition for win
+ Do not need to share hard drive size
+ You can use your external win for any Mac (MB, MBA, MBP, Mac Mini, iMac etc...)
- For mobility purpose, it requires to bring your external hard drive on you (fortunately, it exists some tiny external SSD models)
- Not intended toward novice users (i failed, again and again but i am willing to start over)
I dont really need Windows as primary OS
But at home, i need it for few softwares and games
you can buy SSD for less than 99$ (250 GB) + external hard drive case with UASP for 25$
That's for me the best way to use Win
+ No internal partition for win
+ Do not need to share hard drive size
+ You can use your external win for any Mac (MB, MBA, MBP, Mac Mini, iMac etc...)
- For mobility purpose, it requires to bring your external hard drive on you (fortunately, it exists some tiny external SSD models)
- Not intended toward novice users (i failed, again and again but i am willing to start over)
Never could get bootcamp to work, and since I need actual hardware for the development I do, a VM isn't going to cut it in general. So I install the old fashioned way.
Shogun.
Shogun.