windows on mac

[Marguz]

Hi
I am new to mac.
I understood I can install windows on mac:
1.I saw that you can install it and then choose at the beginning what system you want to log in.i think i saw a video that shows that Lion is running and meanwhile windows is running to in another window.What are the differences between this two choices?
2.I have a macbook air so when I want to install windows 7, how should I do it? I do have the windows 7 installation cd.
All the best

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Booting Windows on the Mac, Mac 101: Using Windows on your Mac via Boot Camp and Helpful Information for Any Mac User

 

[murphychris]

I highly advise you consider VM instead of using Boot Camp for native Windows booting. It's vastly easier to manage, is not nearly as problematic (just search the forums for the kinds and scope of problems people have, including the greater difficulty backup and restore requirements, and in particular if you ever have to start over or resize volumes).

If you are trying to play games, well... I'll not say anything more.

 

[balamw]

I highly advise you consider VM instead of using Boot Camp for native Windows booting.

This is especially true on the MBA, given that with Boot Camp you need to dedicate a decent chunk of your SSD to Windows. Using a VM (VMWare Fusion, Parallels or Virtualbox) gives you a lot more flexibility in adjusting your storage needs on the fly.

The downside is anything that requires full performance (games, Engineering apps, etc... may run poorly in a VM).

B

 

[murphychris]

The downside is anything that requires full performance (games, Engineering apps, etc... may run poorly in a VM).

By the day, if not the hour, I'm increasingly down on Boot Camp. The JHFS+/X read-only support for Windows that Apple provides as a part of the bootcamp.exe installed utilities are apparently really flakey. So sharing files between environments is a PITA unless you get 3rd party software to either properly read-write HFS+ from Windows, or properly read-write NTFS from Mac OS X.

And the disk problems (related to hybrid MBRs, and resizing after-the-fact) people can have on top of it... not worth it, IMO.