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Bootcamp vs. Parallels

W

wwhitmire

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Again, forgive my ignorance, but I'm about to buy a macbook and am curious how these two work. Do either of them come preinstalled? If not, which one should I get? What are the advantages or disadvantages to each?

Thanks for your help!
 
Neither comes pre-installed. There are numerous threads comparing the two. Check the "Windows on the Mac" section and use the search function.
 
No, they do not come preinstalled.

Boot Camp helps you set up a separate partition to install Windows on, so you can choose to boot into OS X or Windows. It is free.

Parallels is a program that runs in OS X that creates a virtual environment for other operating systems. You can use Parallels to run Windows inside of OS X. It is $80.

There's a lot of information and discussion about Boot Camp vs. Parallels in the Windows on the Mac forum. Try searching through there.
 
You can also download a demo of Parallels. It is the full version but expires after a while (but you just have to ask for another demo key)

I use parallels almost exclusively, it works just great. The only reason I have boot camp installed is to play games and I never even do that, so it just takes up space.
 
Nuc said:
You could also try VMware. It's less of a memory hog and I like it better...

Nuc
Click to expand...
This is 'gonna sound really really stupid but I have never tried VMware because the name is....well....not very catchy. It reminds me of something some dude created in his basement on a rainy weekend. Give it a better name and a cool looking icon and I just may try it.
 
skinnylegs said:
This is 'gonna sound really really stupid but I have never tried VMware because the name is....well....not very catchy. It reminds me of something some dude created in his basement on a rainy weekend. Give it a better name and a cool looking icon and I just may try it.
Click to expand...

I prefer the icon of VMware to parallels 'thing'
 
I prefer the icon of VMware to parallels 'thing'
Click to expand...
Wow....in all honesty I never checked it out because I could never get past the name. LOL Damn nice icon! I may just have to check this out!
 
skinnylegs said:
Wow....in all honesty I never checked it out because I could never get past the name. LOL Damn nice icon! I may just have to check this out!
Click to expand...

VMware ... Virtual Machine ware. Makes sense to me 😛

VMware was the best solution on the market for a looooooong time and is still the best for running virtual machines in Windows.
 
Parallel is the way to go. The funny thing is that my school is mac based at least the science department. I use Parallel for office 2007 with xp pro. The parallel program has a awesome display mode that make it seem like your running office right off the mac pc itself. (don't know if I am making sense but its awesome). You should consider it.
 
Unless you want to use Windows for gaming, I would go with Parallels. I just tried it out, and it's amazingly fast. Plus, if you add VirtueDesktop to the mix, you can do the fast OS switching thing as seen in this video.
 
I spent the past 6 months painstakingly using parallels and bootcamp..

bootcamp is OK but switching is a pain.

parallels is slow as heck...

Installed VMware two weeks ago, never going back to the previous 2.
VMware is awesome! Super fast, easy to switch! Everything WORKS.

Very happy
 
lindmar said:
I spent the past 6 months painstakingly using parallels and bootcamp..

bootcamp is OK but switching is a pain.

parallels is slow as heck...

Installed VMware two weeks ago, never going back to the previous 2.
VMware is awesome! Super fast, easy to switch! Everything WORKS.

Very happy
Click to expand...

I found that it was slower than parallels, this may have been a slightly older build though, see here for my post when Fusion first added bootcamp booting support.
 
VMware Fusion beta 3 with the debugging turned off is quite fast. I'm running Vista Ultimate under it (although the fancy stuff doesn't work, not that I like that stuff anyway). I have XP in boot camp and find that using VMware is fine for me, unless I want to play games. I used to dual boot Windows and Linux, and now dual booting OS X and Windows is just as annoying, especially with the clock thing making the desktop in Finder malfunction.

BTW, used to use Parallels, and used the Cohesion feature, it was good for a little while, but got sick of it. Parallels is good, but I'm a VMware veteran and prefer it.
 
Well I got my first Intel mac end of last week and slapped a Boot Camp partition and XP onto it. I thought this was a pre-requisite for Parallels but then I saw that Parallels has several options, running from Boot Camp being just the one.

The first running of Parallels was awful but once it was up and running and in full-screen it seemed to be very performant. I didn't have to setup any drivers either, it just worked.

I suppose I need to look in the forum indicated but in the meantime is it preferable to use a Boot Camp partition or a installation through Parallels itself? I'm not interested in bootin into Windows, I just need to run a few pieces of software from time to time in Windoze.
 
How many machine installations does the Parallel license allow? (For example, I can put Aperture on two of my Macs.)
 
I like parallels myself, mainly because I don't have to reboot and it's a VM and very easy to make several copies to mess with.
 
I use Parallels and am very happy w/ it.

1 - No need to reboot, just start do the Virtual Machine, do what I need to and drop back to OS X.

2 - Can run Linux, Solaris, etc. - very nice to have one machine able to run OS X, Windoz, and Linux, etc.

Boot camp wouldn't work for me, as I can't see rebooting just to do one little chore in windows
 
Parallels runs great but.....

I have an Intel-based iMac with a gig. of RAM and if I have a few apps. open and decide to run Parallels, the whole OS really bogs down.
 
I decide to install both of them

Since Parallel now supports running from a bootcamp partition

so I can restart and run windows natively if I have intensive program to run, otherwise I will just run Parallel
 
I like Parallels. I do VMWare ESX administration at work so I'm familiar with VMWare as well. However, I prefer the look and features of Parallels.

Also, if you plan on playing Windows games, then use both BootCamp and Parallels (since Parallels can use a BootCamp partition). If not, then go with Parallels only.
 
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