My wife’s Dell laptop is on its last legs. The mouse button is messed up so we’re forced to use a USB mouse. And now it’s not getting power unless it happens to be in just the right position. Otherwise, it just dies at random times. So, rather than get a divorce I decided to get a new laptop.
After I stopped doing the Buying A New Laptop Dance, I had to finally break down and decide between the tablet and the MacBook Pro. It was a tough decision, but the fact that I could get back to a Mac and still run Windows was just far too tempting. Kathy Shrock said, "I feel I definitely have the best of all worlds," and that’s what I want!
So over the weekend I picked up a shiny almost new MacBook Pro (decent discount for slightly used on eBay), and I must admit it was like coming home to an old friend. I really love OS X. Apple definitely got it right. So the next step was getting it all set up and of course, installing Windows!
The first challenge was to FIND my Windows CD. We’re in the process of selling our house, so a lot of our stuff is packed up, including all my software! So it took far longer than expected to just find the box with my CD ROMs in it. Once I had the disk, it was decision time: Bootcamp or Parallels Workstation?
Bootcamp is put out by Apple. It’s as official as you can get while still being unofficial (technically it’s a beta). The positives are that it runs Windows perfectly, full speed and everything supported. However, if you want to switch between OSX and Windows, you have to reboot the computer. Inconvenient.
John Blake told me about Parallels Workstation. It allows you to run Windows as a virtual machine. Basically that means that you can run Windows at the exact same time as OSX. So you can have iMovie open in one window and Microsoft Access open in another. The downside is that WIndows will run a bit slower and there are still some things that are unsupported. While it may not be a beta, it’s still bleeding edge and still has room for improvement. Oh yeah, almost forgot one other detail: Parellels Workstation will let you run other operating systems as virtual machines too. Bootcamp only allows you to boot XP. With Parallels, you can run XP, Linux, OS X and others all at the same time!
That part was just too tempting to pass up on. Right now, you can still be part of their beta tesitng and get a copy of Parallels workstation for free for 30 days. I downloaded that and within about 10 minutes, WIndows was installing on my MacBook Pro. I have to admit, I got chills!
My MacBook Pro is only the 1.83ghz model, and it has the minimum 512mb of RAM. I have to admit though, everything ran pretty comfortably! Whether running in a window or in full screen mode, I was able to bounce back and forth between the OS’s without any significant lag time. There’s no question that the computer wasn’t as peppy as it could be, but it wasn’t slow enough to be annoying which is all that counts. So now I have the best of both worlds! I have Windows handy for programming my remote control, experimenting with Second Life (runs native in OSX!), playing poker online or communicating with my cell phone. Other than that, you can find me happily hanging in Tiger-land!
Steve,
All I can say is Welcome Back!
Steve,
You’re my hero! My MacBook Pro is scheduled for delivery on Monday. The first addition may have to be XP. Digital storytelling on both platforms! What “precautions” must one take to prevent all those PC virus/spyware horror stories that we Mac users usually just snicker at?
–Joe
Why not play Second Life natively on OS X?
Joe: I’d reccomend that you don’t do this to your computer!
Mark: For some reason I thought that Second Life was Windows only! I think that sounds like a much better option.
Congrats Steve! The wife wants me to wait until our current laptop is in the same state as your old one (which will be awhile) before we upgrade to a new one.
If you want to have some Jedi fun with your laptop go grab the MacSaber program that allows your new as you swing the notebook around thanks to it’s internal motion sensor. A bit geeky, but a lot of fun.
A video illustrating MacSaber fights can be found on YouTube at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK4AonfnFaM
Argh, my last comment was severely mangled thanks to my poor code using skills. You get the idea though. MacSaber = Your Mac acts like a lightsaber when swung around 
You’ll definately want more memory. My new Macbook just arrived yesterday and I stayed up till 1:30am playing around with it. The speed is just amazing versus my G4 iMac (1.25GHz with 1GB of RAM).
I also opted for the Parallels software. I don’t need to run too much Windows software, and I’d rather not have to reboot to do it.
I’m glad you came back to the Apple fold!
You Mac guys are a hoot!
I have a new Gateway Tablet with a gig of ram, 100 gig hard drive, DVD burner, monster battery pack, and love it.
What is the fascination with a Mac in the first place, and then, a Mac that runs Windows?
Don’t tell me that Macs are more stable, I am at a campus full of Macs and that’s just not true, they aren’t any easier to use, I have used everything out since the Commodore 64 and the TRS80.
I will give you “cute”. They are cute.
But cute makes them run hot, too. Cute makes the power adapters for the iBooks short out in a real short period of time. We have had to replace dozens of those.
I just don’t get it. Help me understand.
[…] Following in the steps of Steve Dembo of teach42.com I also dropped PCs out of my office in favor of a Windows on Mac solution. A $1000 Mac Mini replaced a PC, DVD player, and home media server. […]
I also installed parallels on my Mac Mini (Duo-1GB ram) and used it for the last couple PC applications I needed. The Mini is doubling as my home media centre and also replaced a sick DVD player I had.
Simply Accounting was an application that defiantly didn’t run in VPC on my G5 but runs quite acceptably on Parallels.
QUESTION: Anybody? If you authorize your copy of XP inside Parallels can you move the virtual drive to another Mac?
Hmmm… Not sure, but I would think that you could. Have you asked on the Parallel’s community forum? I can’t find any links to their forum from their site (why hide their own forums??) but if you do a search you can find it.
Checked that - says their fully portable according to this post http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=2026&highlight=windows+activation
I want to move my Windows install between my Mini and my ’soon to arrive’ MBP. Apparently it should work
6/13/2006
Adam Christianson does the “MacCast”, a podcast that I enjoy.
He did a good job reporting on this whole issue.
You’ll have to search his website - he did this issue a while ago.
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=74374416
http://maccast.com/
Thanks for the info!
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