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Nov 04, 09 - 06:20 pm Comment from: Jubei

What about XP speed and performance. Why feed more money to Microsoft POS Vista/7. Stay with XP or XP Pro for as long as possible.

Nov 04, 09 - 06:20 pm Comment from: ken1w

If it is "only" 22 percent faster than VMware Fusion, how can it be faster than Windows running directly using Boot Camp? VMware Fusion runs fine (as long as you allocate sufficient RAM to the VM), but I'm sure it is more than 22 percent slower overall, compared to Windows running directly on the hardware.

Fusion is better, simple as that.

Nov 04, 09 - 07:06 pm Comment from: Sir Gill Bates

They ought to call it "Heaven."

Good one!

Parallels is better than Fusion, simple as that. (Hmmm. Do I smell an impasse?)

Why would anyone want Windows on their Mac, to appease someone else?

How about Crossover? Some of us like more than a couple choices.

XP is better than 7 -- faster, cheaper, and just as vulnerable to attacks.

@Veronica

I have Windows on my Mac to run an occasional game and for running Microsoft Money. If there was a decent financial app in OS X (and please don't say Quicken), I'd probably delete boot camp. I've tried iBank and a few others and they have a long way to go to be equal to the version of Quicken for Windows or MS Money.

Nov 04, 09 - 07:46 pm Comment from: Deus Ex Technica

@Veronica,

"Why would anyone want Windows on their Mac, to appease someone else?"

Unfortunately, yes. It appeases my boss, who pays me money, which I use to appease my wife.

Sadly, that's where the appeasal train stops...(sigh).

Nov 04, 09 - 07:52 pm Comment from: 45north

guy at work, says Parallels is better than vmware. I have XP running on vmware on CentOS. I asked IT to bump up my XP image from 20 to 40G. It took weeks!

Nov 04, 09 - 07:53 pm Comment from: HazMatt

Veronica says:
"Why would anyone want Windows on their Mac, to appease someone else?"

Seriously… some of you Mac snobs need to re-think your attitudes.

But since you asked, I'll tell you why I run VMware Fusion with Windows XP Pro on a couple of our work Macs (small business with about 10 Macs).
1) To run specialized, proprietary WINDOWS ONLY software to update our digital road sign messages.
2) To run specialized, proprietary WINDOWS ONLY software to access our alarm system and program door access cards.
3) To run specialized, proprietary WINDOWS ONLY software to configure and update the occasional router or switch that just can't be done on a Mac (like a firmware update utility or web interface that requires IE 6 or 7).
4) To support my Windows users in preparing VPN policies and the like (also often proprietary WINDOWS ONLY software).

Sensing a trend here? Those are very good reasons I personally maintain a copy of Windows XP.

I COULD run around and contact the software vendors and cry like a baby complaining about their lack of native Mac support, but that would be a royal waste of time and a royal pain in my ass.

So please, stop the retarded comments that have no basis in reality… you just make professional Mac users like myself look bad.

HazMatt

installed , crashed all my VM's, uninstalled and back to V4. Dont bother with it. it is crash snappy.

I would have to agree with HazMat. Being a support tech I have to have both environments for my customers. It's not about what I want but what my customers need. I hate Microsoft and I hope the market share still decreases for them but until that happens we live in a world where Windows is still needed.

Nov 04, 09 - 08:11 pm Comment from: HazMatt

I suppose I should mention that I manage about 40 computers total, for what it's worth. About half of them are Macs, and more would be Macs if I was dictator, but I have the grace to understand that some people just prefer Windows for whatever reason.

HazMatt

OSX is better than anything Windows, simple as that!

Nov 04, 09 - 09:37 pm Comment from: Lilochris

I load up XP Pro with SP2. Runs fast enough for my needs, so I guess VM will not make any money from me anytime soon. Nor will I upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 anytime soon either.

I'll suck-up my version of XP pro on my iMac for as long as I can.

I only use XP just to do homework which requires IE and to capture gameplay from my game consoles with a EasyCap USB video Adapter which only works on windows.

@because

I found very cool personal finance that's Mac native. It is called Moneywell by No Thirst software. Amazing app. I love it. I actually enjoy doing my finances. That was the last app I needed to put the final nail in the Windows coffin.

Nov 04, 09 - 10:32 pm Comment from: Jubei

Remember the MS playbook "EEE". It's why no matter what I try I'll always have to have Windows POS on my Mac. Even when it's web enabled work flow. That's the power of "EEE" that's allowed to continue today.

Ignoring, the snobbish Mac supremacy posts, I'm just wondering...Since this is supposedly faster than Boot Camp, would games perform better in Parallels than in Boot Camp? I'm kind of confused.

@Veronica
"Why would anyone want Windows on their Mac, to appease someone else?"

No, in order to face reality and avoid becoming homeless. Some of us are completely on our own and have to make a living somehow so, after being laid off for more than 6 months, I was glad to be offered a job regardless of the platform.

Parallels 5 works great on my Mac. It did blue screen crashes at first. I checked with their support site, and they said to set the VM to use just one CPU until it's running and has already installed the new Parallels Tools. Once the "Tools" are installed you can shut down, change the CPU's back to 2 or more and everything should work fine.

This did work for me with WinXP Pro XP3, Vista Ultimate SP2, and the Win7 beta Microsoft floated out there.

I'm curious to see some testing by 3rd parties of that claim that Windows runs faster under Parallels than using Boot Camp. That's just very difficult to believe... I wonder if they are telling half-truths and failing to mention this is only true for a select few applications.

Nov 05, 09 - 02:15 am Comment from: Sixvodkas

@ Andy,

Ignoring your snobbish anti Mac user sentiment, it's not snobbish to point out one product is demonstrably superior to another. Side by side reviews comparing OS X to Windows give the nod to Apple.

Following your poorly thought out and worded train of thought, it's "snobbish" to say an Elise is faster than a Pinto.

He listed 4 goals, not three

that claim that Windows runs faster under Parallels than using Boot Camp. That's just very difficult to believe..

That's not at all surprising. Windows' virtual memory implementation is brain-dead, and people have been running Windows in virtual machines under Linux and *BSD for years as a workaround.

I have a friend who had the contract to operate usps.gov for several years, and he was able to replace 21 hosts running Windows with three hosts (identical physical configuration) running multiple instances of Windows under VMWare on Linux. He did this to address a reliability problem; the performance increase was incidental.

-jcr

Yawn, Windoz sucks.

Nov 05, 09 - 08:23 am Comment from: British Mac Head

I run Windows on my Mac Pro for one reason alone. To test my web work in IE. Yes it is Mafia$oft's bloody EEE policy that makes me have to have it. Have I paid for it? Nope, one of my resellers had a spare license and gave me it.

It's pretty bloody cheeky of MS to expect anyone to license one of their OSs when the only reason for the requirement is for the user to waste his time having to f**k around with CSS to make the site they are building work on MSs shitty browsers.

One day IE's market share will get smaller to the point of insignificance and I'll no longer support it and remove Windoze off my mac and drop it in the bitbucket where it belongs!!!

Happy days!

Nov 05, 09 - 08:49 am Comment from: chaz

@hazmatt

Well said, I run Parallels also for windows only software. Makes owing a mac much more satisfying not having to run around and find a separate windows computer to run that stuff on.

I'm convinced, the wondows only software is the #1 reason people shy away from Macs. Hence, this is the best news for Apple users in decades.

@Deus Ex Technica

Thank you, thank you for a wonderful post.
That's the laugh I needed today!

Nov 05, 09 - 09:58 am Comment from: shen

here is a reason to run windows on your mac....

my brother is in charge of IT for a small company. without a Mac he has to have multiple computers running multiple operating systems so that he can program, test linux servers, test databases, image and trouble shoot multiple windows systems for desktops around the company, trouble shoot for Macs around the company (run by the more enlightened workers there in) etc etc etc.

instead he has a macbook and 2 external drives and runs a total of 7 operating systems on one machine without rebooting.

if you have a better solution Veronica, please tell us....

"That's not at all surprising. Windows' virtual memory implementation is brain-dead, and people have been running Windows in virtual machines under Linux and *BSD for years as a workaround."

indeed we are fast approaching the point that I personally ran that work around a full decade ago.

this was years ago, granted, but way back when it was also true that the only thing worse than windows brain-dead virtual memory was its massive networking overhead. changing from a windows NT network machine to a BSD file server gained us a few megs per second just from the heavy overhead of the windows network stack on the cables. anyone know if that is still true?

Nov 05, 09 - 10:02 am Comment from: Jubei

@shen

"instead he has a macbook and 2 external drives and runs a total of 7 operating systems on one machine without rebooting."

Now thats impressive.

Why would anyone want Windows on their Mac, to appease someone else?

Why yes, that is why. She Who Must Be Obeyed insists on using a couple of old Windoze programs. Not only are these not available for Macs, they are out of production, so we are stuck with XP for a while...

@ Sixvodkas

Haha what? How exactly am I being snobbish and anti Mac? I specifically said "ignoring the snobbish Mac supremacy posts" for example "Yawn, windowz sucks." or "Why would anyone want Windows on their Mac?" To me those are ridiculously immature and like it or not, Windows 7, Vista, XP are pretty damn good OS's. (Yes I said Vista, after SP1 it's been as good as XP) I guess the only good reason why one would say a Mac is better than a PC is if you do some sort of tech support work (common hardware ya know) but I highly doubt everyone shouting "Winblows sucks!" has a tech support job. Don't get me wrong though, I love my MB, MBP, and iMac and OS X, it's just that it's ridiculous seeing people post this type of crap about Windows and have no reasons backing it up. Both OS's have their share of problems but both are eventually fixed. Both are equal in my book.

Nov 05, 09 - 01:21 pm Comment from: prenzelberger

I just upgraded to Version 5 and must say, it was worth it.
On my MBP2.2, Parellels starts and runs noticibly faster and I just love the new Crystal display mode, where Windows elements are selectable from the menu bar.
Much better than the previous integrated mode.

I don't know whether it runs faster than BootCamp, but certainly, the latter would make more sense for RAM-hungry applications. If I need to do some video conversion, etc. I go to Bootcamp.
For checking out my sites, Parallels now works the way I had hoped.

@ John C Randolph

It's been some time since I had installed Windows XP in Boot Camp, but on thinking about it some more, I actually do understand the claim they are making with Parallels. The drivers that Apple provides with Boot Camp are "adequate", but yes, far from optimized. What few people seem to realize is that, once Windows is installed in Boot Camp, you don't have to rely on those drivers. I had installed updated drivers myself from nVidia for the graphics card, updated drivers for the sound card, etc, and gotten much better performance from doing so. I downloaded the trial of Parallels 5 earlier and tried it out for a short while with Windows XP, and while overall it is much more impressive than the last time I tried Parallels a couple year ago, it still seems to fall short of a well-tweaked Windows XP install under Boot Camp.

Tried paralles, like virtual box better

Nov 06, 09 - 01:48 pm Comment from: Ferf Muckmeyer

Parallels V5 rocks. Indeed it is significantly faster than v4, and faster and better than Fusion 3. I'm pretty impressed with it.