The XP installation process ran smoothly. It correctly identified the 8GB partition I had BootCamp Assistant create as its C: drive, which I formatted as an NTFS volume as XP installer suggested. The first post-installation reboot left me with a blank screen after the initial XP start-up screen, so I forced a shutdown and restarted manually. This time I got the correct Set-up screen and was able to complete the XP installation. Incidentally, the video glitch seems an issue Apple needs to address. Even with the ATI drivers installed courtesy of the CD BootCamp makes, there's a distinct pause between the initial XP screen and the Welcome image.
Installing the BootCamp drivers CD went well, too. The process has a habit of triggering Windows' hardware detection system - or this happens anyway - but I ignored it completely, only clicking on windows warning about unqualified drivers, as per the BootCamp instruction manual. As Apple admits, there's no support for the integrated iSight camera or for some of the more advanced features of the trackpad, though it works.
Running XP afterward was a joy. With access to all the MacBook Pro's memory and both processor cores, performance was nippy and generated a PCMark 05 rating of 3,369. Unlike Parallels Desktop, this XP install could run the full range of PCMark tests, including the 3D graphics benchmarks. For comparison, BootCamp's CPU score was 4,061 - 71.2 per cent faster than PD's scored 2,891.
3DMark 06 at 1,280 x 768 yielded 1,112, which is nothing to write home about even for a notebook. Then again, Apple's clocked the GPU to around 310MHz - roughly two-thirds of what the Radeon Mobility X1600 can go to.
The only problem I encountered was a Blue Screen of Death immediately after installing Skype 2.5, but I've since run a range of apps without any such hiccups. The first time I rebooted back into Mac OS X, I experienced an odd glitch: after an hour or so's use, a couple of files newly placed on the desktop disappeared. But they reappeared after a reboot and I've not had a re-occurrence of the issue since. A Disk Utility check revealed no problems with my Mac OS X partition. Occasionally after a Windows session, Mac OS X loses track of British Summer Time and defaults to GMT. This is irritating, but the sort of thing you expect with beta software.
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COMMENTS
Sharing of Files?
Something I've been wondering for a while.. is it possible to share files (eg: Outlook mailbox, my documents, favourites, etc) across both operating systems?
What are the issues around such sharing of content? compatibility problems?
Being new to Mac, I dont know how shareable content is with Windows machines, and this is definitely somethign that is important to me should i make the switch to Mac (somethign i'm seriously considering now that i can still use Windows for development work.. i dont think you can get MS Visual Studio for Mac... or can u?)
Missing the Point
I really don't think the author of this article really understands the power of Parallels. As an IT specialist I routinely run multiple virtual machines simultaneously on my MacBook Pro. I've simulated/built LANs, compiled applications and tested on indiviual virtual machines or in groups of up to 4 simultaneously.
Yes host only networking is the default, but multiple host only machines can talk to each other when hosted on the same physical hardware. This is incredibly useful. I run a workstation dedicated to windows for things at work that OSX can't yet do, like run old crappy dos and win32 applications from the network (Darwine and Crossover are up and coming, but not there yet for me), and that one is set to "bridged". With bridged networking, the virtual machine appears to the outside as its own unique computer. And, yes, mulitple bridged machines can be run on the same physical hardware, visible to each other and the world.
As for boot camp, give me a UNIX kernel like OSX and parallels on top of it instead, for everything, anyday, always. The ONLY time I can foresee a need for bootcamp is for games, when 3D matters, and when a port isn't available yet for OSX natively. Given time, I see 3D added to Parallels as well. For now, the few games I care to play have been ported to OSX already. Ditto on high end graphics and video products.
As far as performance goes, think snappy. It is "near native", nothing at all like the Virtual PC days. The fact that the author discounts due to the fact 3D video isn't available has missed the boat entirely in my opinion. These macintel machines offer the best of everything when configured with Parallels desktop and sufficient RAM, and they are reasonably priced as well for the flexibility, performance, and security you get. I've stopped using my other PCs, Linux, BSD, and XP. I have access to as many as I want for free. The experience is that good.
Repair disk permissions
Quote from the article: "Reports from folk who've tried it already suggest that it's a good idea to verify your hard drive and repair file-access permissions before running BootCamp."
Of course they did. It's part of the Mac Voodoo, that. Anyone who wants to appear knowledgeable but has no clear idea of what they're talking about will recommend one or more of: repair permissions; clearing PRAM; installing software updaters via the combo rather than incremental package. It certainly wouldn't help in this situation and almost never does at any other time, but it's part and parcel of The Mac Experience ;-)
Parallels rocks
Parallels is an amazing piece of software, and unlike the reviewer I can recomment it wholeheartedly. It sounds, from the problems he had swtiching between full-screen Windows and OSX, that either he had an old, pre-release copy of Paralells, or he didn't bother to read the instructions properly, because full-screen switching is built-in.
In addition, in the months I have been using Parallels on my intel iMac, I have never had any problems with lagging mouse cursors, or disappearing GUI elements, and it sounds to me like - again - the reviewer failed to follow the instructions to install "Parallels Tools" once he had finished the Windows installation process.
Parallels has worked for me flawlessly. I have never, ever, had it crash, and I use it daily to run my stock trading software. Performance is excellent, and much faster (providing 3D graphics aren't required) than any Pentium-based PC. The machine takes full advantage of the Core Duo VT-mode (which again mistakenly the reviewer says might be something for future versions).
Unless you want to play hard core 3D games (in which case use Boot Camp), Parallels is the best of both worlds: instant switching between OSX and Windows, on the same machine, with virtually no loss of performance. On my iMac, Parallels running Windows 2000 and my stock trading software uses up just 21% of total CPU capacity, according to the Activity Monitor. That's pretty amazing.
In short, Boot Camp is a complete waste of time, unless you simply have to have access to 3D graphics. For the 90% of the rest of the world who don't Parallels is the absolute best solution - especially as you can cut and paste between the two OS environments and set-up shared folders. For $80 (and assuming you already have a copy of Windows from an old PC lying around) you can run Windows on your Mac, with virtually no sacrifices. The reviewer grossly underplayed the usefulness of Parallels, and overplayed its very few shortcomings IMO. Parallels beats the pants of VMware in terms of usability, stability, and resource requirements. Macs running OSX, hosting other OSs via Parallels, really are the most broadly compatible and versatile computers on the planet now.
Linux on MacOS
Maybe I'm missing something, but can anyone suggest a decent reason why anyone would want to run Linux on top of MacOS, which is itself based on a BSD back end??
