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wnxgenral

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 14, 2008
286
16
Hey everyone,

I have both Windows XP Profressional and Windows Vista Ultimate... which one should I throw on my new Macbook Pro for the BEST windows environment... I plan on using it for Light gaming as well as some coding. Thanks!
 

MPHL

macrumors regular
Apr 7, 2008
106
0
Unless you have 4Gb of ram I would suggest not even considering Vista, I myself prefer XP only because of its compatibility and ease of use.
 

UltraNEO*

macrumors 601
Jun 16, 2007
4,057
15
近畿日本
Hey everyone,

I have both Windows XP Profressional and Windows Vista Ultimate... which one should I throw on my new Macbook Pro for the BEST windows environment... I plan on using it for Light gaming as well as some coding. Thanks!

Depends which you favour the most. Arguably some users prefer Windoze XP over Vista and there are users who'd argue this... Both will only see a maximum of 2.9GBs unless your thinking of installing the 64bit versions. In which case, I strongly advise you find all the drivers first!

If you like my opinion, I prefer XP Pro (32bit).

Unless you have 4Gb of ram I would suggest not even considering Vista, I myself prefer XP only because of its compatibility and ease of use.

Umm.. Incorrect!
32Bit OS's can't address 4GB of physical ram, it's just not possible.
The OS must be 64bit to address and use the full 4GB of RAM
 

ChrisA

macrumors G5
Jan 5, 2006
12,540
1,652
Redondo Beach, California
..as well as some coding. Thanks!

If you are writing software you will need to test it using the same OS(es) as your users. In the Windows world this means both XP and Vista are required. VMware makes this easy. I keep four or five OSes in my iMac

If you are butting Windows in the Mac for running software you buy then use whichever OS runs that software best.

If it were me I'd not bother with Windows
 

goinskiing

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2008
914
11
Meridian, ID
Unless you have 4Gb of ram I would suggest not even considering Vista, I myself prefer XP only because of its compatibility and ease of use.

I use Vista Business using Boot Camp and it runs just fine on 2 GB. IMO you're just fine to use vista as secondary OS.
 

BornAgainMac

macrumors 604
Feb 4, 2004
7,275
5,212
Florida Resident
Windows Vista Ultimate. Show people how fast you can run Microsoft's latest OS. The TV tuner is nice and not really talked about much anywhere. You just need to add some USB tuner hardware. Best feature of Vista in my opinion. The woman's speech voice that is part of Vista is pretty good for Windows. You can run in VMWare and have Mac Alex and that Vista woman fight it out on which OS is the best using Text to Speech. Post it on YouTube for a few laughs.

Or install XP if you just want something runs most Windows apps and not duplicate functionality that your Mac has already natively and 64-bit.
 

cluthz

macrumors 68040
Jun 15, 2004
3,118
4
Norway
I'm still on XP even tho I have 4GB ram.
Vista costs a lot of money and XP simple does the job for me as my Win environment.
 

MacDawg

Moderator emeritus
Mar 20, 2004
19,823
4,503
"Between the Hedges"
I have Vista and it runs fine, but it depends on what you want to do with it.

Woof, Woof – Dawg
pawprint.gif
 

cutebutstupid

macrumors newbie
Feb 15, 2008
4
0
It's too bad the OP didn't say whether he's planning to run Windows with Boot Camp or Parallel/Fusion.

Vista needs the whole 4 gigs if you're going to run it in a virtual machine, but two gigs is fine with Boot Camp.

XP can't give you a tappable(?) trackpad in Boot Camp.

The virtual disk (or Boot Camp disk) is going to have to be an order of magnitude larger with Vista.

Has anyone tried installing Boot Camp on an up and running system?
 

kingcrowing

macrumors 6502a
May 24, 2004
718
0
Burlington, VT
go Vista I say, it'll run great on there and like it or not its the future of Windows, personally haver using it heavily I prefer it to XP now.
 

Eric.

macrumors regular
Mar 30, 2008
188
0
I'm going to second Vista (64-bit if you can in case you get more RAM later). I use 64-bit Business on my main PC with a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, and 7900GT video card. The Macbook Pro's performance is very close to this, which runs Vista without a hitch. I used to triple boot Vista, XP, and Ubuntu, but now XP is off of it.
 
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