Dual booting operating systems on a MBP

[fitzmacj]

Hello MacRumors,

This is my first post, so if this is in the wrong place or am missing something please let me know!! Ohhh..and Hello!

Sooo this is my situation, i am getting ready to purchase a MBP, 13 inch, with the upgraded processor and ram, below:

2.8GHz dual-core
Intel Core i7
4GB 1333MHz
750GB 5400-rpm1
Intel HD Graphics 3000
8 GB Ram

I am planning out my MBP purchase and the software that i want to install on it. I am in the programming world and want to run windows on the machine for other various reasons. My question is what is better, dual booting windows 7 Ultimate on the harware with Boot Camp or running it in Parelles Desktop?

My concerns are speed, battery life, and consumption/efficiency of other resources.

Thank you in advance for your answers!

Best,
CJF

 

[JronMasteR]

You can do both. You can install Windows as a bootcamp partition first and then use it as a virtual machine. That's how I do it. When I want to play a game, I use bootcamp. For other stuff like the office suite I use the virtual machine.
Battery life is definitely better with the virtual machine. And the trackpad works a lot better.

 

[fitzmacj]

Thanks for the response. So would this mean that i would have two version of windows installed? or is there some way to keep them updated and in sync with one another?

 

[JronMasteR]

It uses the exact same partition. Just install Windows using bootcamp, and then install Parallels and select your bootcamp partition. Parallels will install some additional files after the first boot. That's all. No need to sync anything.

 

[fitzmacj]

WOW!! i didnt know that...thank you so much. That solves all my problems/questions. looks like i know what i am going to do now.

 

[JronMasteR]

You're welcome. Yes it's pretty cool. You have the best of both solutions. The only thing you'll have to do is to activate your Windows twice. Once for bootcamp and once for the virtual machine, because Parallels is using special hardware drivers. When you use Parallels, you can choose how many processor cores and how much ram you want to assign to the virtual machine. Make sure you set the preferred number of cores before you activate your Windows. Otherwise Windows will recognize hardware changes and you would have to activate it again. Same goes for Office and other MS software.

Regards

 

[ljonesj]

I keep getting an error with my bootcamp partition as its ntfs with parallels it cannot get the drive to remount it is running xp is that the issue with parallels 7 trail

 

[fitzmacj]

Thanks again...

So once the VM is created and initialized, i cant change the 'hardware' settings, else windows and office will flag the HW changes and deactivate. Im assuming b.c the HW change is flagged as a new install on what they believe is a new machine?

Thanks one more time.

 

[JronMasteR]

Thanks again...

So once the VM is created and initialized, i cant change the 'hardware' settings, else windows and office will flag the HW changes and deactivate. Im assuming b.c the HW change is flagged as a new install on what they believe is a new machine?

Thanks one more time.

You can always change your memory, without having to reactivate. But when you change the number of processor cores, windows will detect a hardware change and you will need to activate it again.
The number of activations are limited to maybe 5. As soon as you want to do another activation, you would need to call microsoft.

 

[Spadoinkles]

You can always change your memory, without having to reactivate. But when you change the number of processor cores, windows will detect a hardware change and you will need to activate it again.
The number of activations are limited to maybe 5. As soon as you want to do another activation, you would need to call microsoft.

I've probably activated my copy of Windows XP a good ten times between my Macbook and iMac with all the troubles I've had. (One of them being my indecisive manner constantly making me repartition to resize)

 

[Freyqq]

bootcamp is going to be much faster, but parallels is more convenient because you don't have to reboot.