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Boot Camp on nMP only supports Windows 8

Y

ytoyoda

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2013
91
0
Tokyo
I found this table at
Boot Camp: System requirements for Microsoft Windows operating systems

Good news for me is that Boot Camp supports nMP, bad news is that it supports only Windows 8.

Last year, I install Windows 8 on two of my PCs and I was so disappointed by its very bad user interface for the people who were so much familiarized with Windows 7 or XP. After a short trial, I decided to reinstall Windows7 on one PC.
Recently, I tried Windows 8.1 on the other PC. Windows 8.1 is little better, but far from satisfaction. And finally I reinstall Windows 7 on this PC also. ( I still have these unused Windows 8.)

So, I was planning to use Windows 7 on my nMP and I actually bought a Windows 7 professional for this purpose, last week. I should wait until I see this information.

It looks like I had to use Windows 8.1 on Boot Camp. So I use it only when the application requires full HW access, but I will usually use Windows 7 by VMWare Fusion, in parallel with OSX.
 

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That was pretty obvious, Apple drops support for older Windows versions pretty quickly.
 
Wait, what?

Seriously?

That is sucktastic. I have a Windows 7 license. Was planning to use with my nMP on an external thunderbolt SSD - which I also have. I hate giving my $ to Microsoft but I need Windows from time to time.

Thanks for the heads up - at least I didn't waste time trying to setup a Windows 7 bootcamp partition. Will watch this thread to see if people find Win7 to be viable on the nMP
 
Deal breaker for me that. Will have to consult with my clients as they want 7x64 on their cans.

If there's a stable way of hacking the BC installer that is an option.
 
Know of anyone who installed Windows 7 on a thunderbolt or USB3 drive on an iMac or Mini?

I've always had problems with using Bootcamp. It would work for a while and then require serious rebuliding before it would work right again. Once I put it on a separate drive on my 1,1 it worked much better.
 
All of the Windows 8 fear is overblown. With some minor tweaking (even easier with 8.1) you can get it to feel almost exactly like 7 and never have to deal with Metro, ever.

Microsoft's colossally stupid mistake was not providing a simple toggle option to use a classic style interface.
 
ytoyoda said:
Windows 8 adoption is very slow, because of its terrible user interface.
Click to expand...
The interface is not terrible - it's unfamiliar.
PC users seem far more resistant to change than Apple users, so different = bad to them.

And don't forget that Apple OS updates are now free, when Windows is a commercial product, so you will not see adoption rates like we do with iOS and OS X.


The new Start Screen is more-or-less equivalent to Launchpad on OS X - though it has some additional functionality with the Live Tiles.

Windows 8.1 can boot straight to the desktop and you can still pin applications to the taskbar (equivalent to the Dock) just as you do in Windows 7.

There are a lot of performance improvements and other new features and UI improvements on the desktop, so I wouldn't want to go back to Windows 7 any more.


I will never understand how having the option to run tablet (Metro/"Modern UI") applications is a bad thing.
I now have a fully functional version of Flipboard on my PC, which looks great when I'm sending the image to a TV.
With OS X, you don't have that option. iPad apps are only accessible on iOS hardware.
 
Beta Particle said:
The interface is not terrible - it's unfamiliar.
PC users seem far more resistant to change than Apple users, so different = bad to them.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I used the wrong word. Yes, it's very unfamiliar.
Starting apps is OK, it is like Launchpad in OSX. When I tried Win8, the most frustrating task is accessing some control panel functions. It was so familiar for me on Win7 but on Win8, I had to try several different places to access, for example, "Device and Printer" control panel. I was always frustrated and gave it up.
I think, I have to learn it anyway. So I hope I'll be comfortable using it in a few months.
 
If that's true then that sucks; Windows 8 is horrible, Windows 8.1 only marginally less-so. Both have fantastic behind the scenes improvements, but the mash-up of touch and desktop is an absolute nightmare that I just can't get used to no matter how hard I try, and I really have tried. It's great on the hybrid laptop/tablets that it seems to be aimed at, but for desktop computers its simply not so great.

I'm hoping there's no technical reason that you can't just create the Bootcamp partition then overwrite it with Windows 7, I already have a Windows 7 partition that I could hopefully just copy across, as Windows 7 is a lot more usable IMO. It supports 64-bit UEFI, which should be enough for it to run as I doubt any drivers are going to be Windows 8 only.
 
ytoyoda said:
When I tried Win8, the most frustrating task is accessing some control panel functions. It was so familiar for me on Win7 but on Win8, I had to try several different places to access, for example, "Device and Printer" control panel. I was always frustrated and gave it up.
Click to expand...
It's in the same place as before.

People seem to get confused over it for some reason but generally:
Use the Metro settings app for settings relating to the Metro UI/apps
Use the desktop control panel for desktop-related settings as before.

The quickest way to access the control panel is to right-click the start button, or do a search on the start screen.
 
Damn it windows 8 doesn't have Windows XP virtual PC...zzzzz

Any idea how the driver for the FirePro D300 for Windows will be? I checked AMD website, but no mention of it whatsoever. Hoping I can use SolidEdge (OpenGL 3D app) with the new MacPro
 
I was actually so disappointed with Windows 7 performance in BootCamp on an rMBP that I installed 8.1 to see if things got any better. Since I only need to have a Windows environment for a few Windows-only things from work, and I actually use a Mac at work, both interfaces were unfamiliar to me and I adapted just fine to 8.1.

Side note, I've noticed that somehow sites know that I'm using a Mac even in when booted in Windows (7 and now 8.1). I get a message saying that on a Mac, only Safari is supported. I don't know if there's a setting somewhere for me to get a browser NOT to send a Mac ID signal (this is starting to feel like I'm trying to get my Raptor to send Cylon ID codes… Battlestart Galatica reference FTW!).

The other thing is, will I be able to install Windows 8.1 on an external drive? I've not had a ton of luck with that; I was thinking of partitioning the built-in flash drive, but if it'll work off an external drive I'd happily do that.

Stuart
 
Virtualization won't be the best option as it'll have a performance hit on my 3D CAD software.

Hyper-V? But if I recalled it requires you to own a CD copy of Win XP right?
 
Lol, I guessed I should've made myself more clear.

My main work for Windows is done in Windows 7, I only need Windows XP to view some real old files which are not performance intensive, so virtualization is not a problem for those usage. But I can't use OSX to run my Windows 7 as the performance of the software I use (SolidEdge) would degrade in virtualization(Parallels/Fusion).

FYI, Solid Edge is installed in my Windows 7 partition
 
wheelhot said:
Virtualization won't be the best option as it'll have a performance hit on my 3D CAD software.
Click to expand...

The benefit of VMware Fusion is running OSX and Windows in parallel, but it means Windows cannot fully utilizes the hardware resources.
But I had no idea on how that overhead is.
So, I run GreekBench on Windows 7, both BootCamp and VMWare. (on iMac, Core i5, total RAM is 8 GByte )
The performance of Windows in Virtual Machine varies by the total RAM and the number of cores assigned to the virtual machine.

In this case, 2GB of RAM showed best performance. It means, we need to left 6GB of RAM to OSX, to obtain best performance. So, using VMWare, total RAM must be greater than the amount you need on Windows.

For the CPU oriented task, there is some degradation, but it is not significant.
Overhead is just 4% to 5%.

Please note:
On VMWare setting, the number of cores always means the number of logical cores. However, I run this test on iMac with Core i5. It doesn't support hyper threading, so number of logical core is equal to physical core.
 

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That's almost kind of snarky.
I'm not a huge fan of any of the Windows, but if I have to, Win 7 is a robust blend of not too ugly and driver availability.
I'm not too bummed. I use virtualbox if I want to sully my Macs with a Win OS.
 
What is really difficult about Windows 8?

I think a lot of comments are based on just loud perceptions.

Windows 8.1 is easy to use, you can have it boot directly to desktop and you can work in it all day without even touching the Start Screen, just pin all your favorite apps to the Taskbar. In fact, you can configure the Start Screen to make it display all apps like the All Programs menu by default. Just think of it as a full screen Start menu with more details.

Also, just learn these couple keyboard shortcuts and you are good to go:
Windows key + X
Windows key + 'i' (without quotes of course)

If you complain about learning keyboard shortcuts, then you are seriously not a OS X user either since that's part of what makes using OS X fun. File Explorer in Windows 8/8.1 is way more powerful than the dumbed down experience in Vista/Windows 7 and if you don't like it, you can always customize it and pin your favorite commands, you can copy file paths, better ways to manage file I/O operations such as copy and paste multiple files, you can even pause one or more copy operations, in addition to that you can easily mount .ISO images, easily add storage to your system, better backup of files using File History.

Its a great OS once you settle down, give it a week instead of listening to dumb@$$ critics who are solely OS X users and are simply reviewing for the sake of reviewing instead of learning the operating system. It s no different from a Windows user going to OS X for the first time, you are gonna have to familiarize yourself with it. Besides, Windows 8 is still familiarly Windows, in addition to the fact that if you can point and click you have already learned most of the OS.
 
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