Which way to windoze?

[MichaelQ]

I've used Sun's Virtual Box for a couple of windows installs now and it works fine. I prefer it over Bootcamp as I can just fire up what I need then close it away again. But no need to pay for VM Ware or Parallels.

IMO most of our Mac magazines have done everyone a great disservice by generally ignoring Virtual Box in most reviews and articles. I'm sure there are loads of people who have wasted money on Parallels when it wasn't needed.

But I guess there aren't too many shiny full page ads for Virtual Box next to the articles either.

Having sold my old GPS this week I am down to one Windows program. I'll probably pick up a cheap Win7 rather than stuffing about putting Win7 or XP on my new iMac. Be nice to have a Win box so I can deal with a few customers who get into trouble.

(ZOMFG Windows Live Mail - same piece of junk MS have been selling for 10 years. Sill needs a reboot every time the password goes wonky).

[clinton1550]

Just for the record, I've found the link to the VM application review on Macworld. If you visit this page first it will point you in the direction of the articles in the series.

I received a notification that my copy of Windows 7 RC will expire in about 10 days. I'll be able to use it until at least June but between then and March, Windows will be making every effort to be as annoying as possible.

So I need to make a decision on which VM app will suit my needs best before Windows expires and the Macworld articles are proving to be very useful.

[skyhawkmatthew]

I use VMWare Fusion and really couldn't be happier. I especially love Unity mode, which allows me to run Windows apps alongside my Mac ones.

E.g. working on my Software Design and Development homework the other day:

[clinton1550]

Originally Posted by skyhawkmatthew

I use VMWare Fusion and really couldn't be happier. I especially love Unity mode, which allows me to run Windows apps alongside my Mac ones.

E.g. working on my Software Design and Development homework the other day:

I've tried all three VM apps before, I found VMware to be the easiest to use back then and it still is now. I prefer fullscreen mode because I'm always going to be in one or the other, it's very rare that I need to have an Application and a Program running side by side. That said, I was playing around with Unity today and quite liked it.

So over the next few days I'm going to mine my Boot Camp partition for data, deauthorise everything and Time Machine the living daylights out of OS X so I can nuke my hard drive, reclaim the Boot Camp partition, reinstall Snow Leopard along with a brand new copy of Win7 in VMware.

The next difficult choice is which version of Win7. I've been so used to running the RC (which is the equivalent of Ultimate) that I'm worried I might miss out on something by dropping down a version or two. But that's a question I'll have to ask elsewhere.

[pmoeser]

Originally Posted by clinton1550

I

So over the next few days I'm going to mine my Boot Camp partition for data, deauthorise everything and Time Machine the living daylights out of OS X so I can nuke my hard drive, reclaim the Boot Camp partition, reinstall Snow Leopard along with a brand new copy of Win7 in VMware.

I would also strongly suggest a SuperDuper bootable backup as well!

[clinton1550]

Originally Posted by pmoeser

I would also strongly suggest a SuperDuper bootable backup as well!

Good idea. I've never had any trouble in the past but it can't hurt and I'd get back up and running sooner.

[clinton1550]

Well I found out today that the one thing that I truly need Windows for won't work in VMware. I need Windows for my GPS tracker, there's a Mac version of the software available but it's the buggiest application I've ever used so I use the Windows version instead. Anyway, I tried it out in VMware and the program only half recognises the tracker. It will connect but it won't download any tracks, I keep getting error messages.

So it looks like I still need Boot Camp. When I buy Win7 I'll still erase my hard drive but I'll give more space to Boot Camp, I only gave Windows 20 GB of space and I'm always running with 3 GB to spare, which isn't enough to actually do anything.

I won't miss that space because my startup drive only has 20 GB of stuff on it, all my media is stored on external drives. I could probably do a 50/50 split or even a 60/40. At any rate, I know what I'll be doing over a weekend in the not to distant future.

[MichaelQ]

I thought Boot Camp had some space limits?

I know when I did mine I decided to be clever clogs and not read the second half of the install instructions - which resulted in me spending the rest of the weekend undoing it and redoing it again.

Does your GPS software work in Win7?

[clinton1550]

Originally Posted by MichaelQ

I thought Boot Camp had some space limits?

I know when I did mine I decided to be clever clogs and not read the second half of the install instructions - which resulted in me spending the rest of the weekend undoing it and redoing it again.

Does your GPS software work in Win7?

Not that I'm aware of, I should probably look into that. Yes, the software officially supports Win7, it's been working fine under Boot Camp for months. So it must be a problem with the way OS X sees the tracker and and the way VMware passes it onto Windows.