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Bootcamp speed?
- Thread starter zorg
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With Boot Camp, the only issue is the optimization of the drivers included -- Bootcamp is just a bootloader and a set of drivers, as far as Windows is concerned. You ARE running Windows on a PC when you're running Boot Camp. There is *NO* emulation of anything. And all the stuff for which drivers are provided is pretty much hardware that has been / is / will be supported on Windows PCs.
So the speed will be comparable to a similarly spec'd Windows PC. That is, if you go out and find a Core Duo Windows PC, with the same amount of RAM, similar hard drive, and same video card, that's about what you'll get. Which is to say, insanely fast, for the most part, considering you're running a five-years-old OS on top of a Core Duo.
EDIT: the only thing I can't vouch for... is how well the average program in Windows takes advantage of two cores. Programs that can use multi-processor setups should fly. Programs that can't take advantage of the cores, though, might not be quite so blindingly fast.
So the speed will be comparable to a similarly spec'd Windows PC. That is, if you go out and find a Core Duo Windows PC, with the same amount of RAM, similar hard drive, and same video card, that's about what you'll get. Which is to say, insanely fast, for the most part, considering you're running a five-years-old OS on top of a Core Duo.
EDIT: the only thing I can't vouch for... is how well the average program in Windows takes advantage of two cores. Programs that can use multi-processor setups should fly. Programs that can't take advantage of the cores, though, might not be quite so blindingly fast.
bootcamp is a merely a tool to enable you to install the XP without a hack, its not a program or an emulator
zorg said:
I think Boot Camp as it is now will have a trivial impact. The big question is what happens next. If Parallels continues to progress at a nice clip, and adds more hardware features (i.e. allows passthrough to the video card and so on), or if Apple implements such a system in a future OS that allows Windows programs to run on top of OS X without having to shut down and reboot, or as WINE develops on Intel Macs, then... I dunno. Those things to me are much more make/break for Apple than Boot Camp is.
It'll be an interesting ride. That's for sure.
mkrishnan said:I think Boot Camp as it is now will have a trivial impact. The big question is what happens next. If Parallels continues to progress at a nice clip, and adds more hardware features (i.e. allows passthrough to the video card and so on), or if Apple implements such a system in a future OS that allows Windows programs to run on top of OS X without having to shut down and reboot, or as WINE develops on Intel Macs, then... I dunno. Those things to me are much more make/break for Apple than Boot Camp is.
It'll be an interesting ride. That's for sure.
I think the impact of bootcamp is more than trivial considering all some of the reasons why people don't buy Mac computers today. If leopard allows fast user switching between Windows (Vista) and 10.5 then considering the popularity of Apple as a company I think many people will switch. I totally agree there.
Have you SEEN the new ads? j/k
zorg said:
Whenever Mac's are more than 2 percent of the computers used in the entire world, we can talk about PC's becoming obsolete.
MacsomJRR said:I think the impact of bootcamp is more than trivial considering all some of the reasons why people don't buy Mac computers today. If leopard allows fast user switching between Windows (Vista) and 10.5 then considering the popularity of Apple as a company I think many people will switch. I totally agree there.
Have you SEEN the new ads? j/k
I've been a windows user all of my life. In fact, have even spouted Mac hate speech from time to time. As soon as I heard that I could run windows on a Mac I bought a 2,500 dollar machine.
I use windows for work stuff. Edius Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, After effects, photshop. And a few games (FEAR).
If I'm hanging out on the internet, listening to music, talking on aim, downloading. Or anything else, I use the MAC side. I've found that I like it a lot better, and it runs much smoother than windows. I switched because the computer makes me incredibly versatile as a professional video editor. I can run Premiere and FCP on the same machine. The possibilities are endless.
I've been much more of an early adopter recently than in the past, and probably more than the average person so I can't speak on the impact of bootcamp. But I can say from experience that it converted this windows user to a Mac owner for life.
Newbie here. My 17" MBP is shipping so will be here in 2-3 days. I also pimped my ride with 2 extra keyboards, mice, backpack, harman soundsticks, icurve stand etc.
Basically I am a dedicated Windows user all my life. I have literally NEVER used a Mac - not even for 5 minutes, but just spent a good few quid on this new machine.
Am I mad? I hope not. Basically my current setup is a Dell PC at work, and Dell PC at home - but at home I can only really check email etc because I keep all my files and programmes on the main machine. In theory I could maybe do something with an external hard drive, or swappable hard drive but it will just get messy.
So I decided on a laptop, especially as this will let me work overseas occasionally both for business and when on holiday. But 90% of the time I intend to use the laptop really as a portable hard drive - external mouse, screen, keyboard etc.
The MAC hardware gets consistently good reviews, good support, and only thing close might have been an IBM looking at my research - but hey that is the dull choice.
So at this stage my plan is to use it 95% for XP. It's a shame but with only a 120Gb hard drive (using 90Gb on the Dell and climbing) at the partition stage I am gonna need to make a life or death decision.
I think I am gonna need to give Mac OS the bare minimum size (reinstall it to min size) partition as I cannot change things later! This in turn means I cannot really then install much on the MAC side - just maybe a few bits for playing.
Looks like I can add some software so that MAC OS can maybe see the files on the main XP partition (so play music etc?).
It sounds brutal but in fact once Bootcamp is loaded could I actually delete the MAC OS if necessary?
I am gonna give myself a few weeks for a gradual change over, so might play with the MAC OS a bit. Also will see if I can delete some of the junk on my main PC and go maybe 90Gb and 30Gb on the partitions at least to give it a chance.
Am I missing any tricks here?
I know that Bootcamp is only Beta, but apart from the partitioning dramas it sounds stable and I know as soon as I switch to a laptop I need to back up religiously (even if it was an IBM etc).
Basically I am a dedicated Windows user all my life. I have literally NEVER used a Mac - not even for 5 minutes, but just spent a good few quid on this new machine.
Am I mad? I hope not. Basically my current setup is a Dell PC at work, and Dell PC at home - but at home I can only really check email etc because I keep all my files and programmes on the main machine. In theory I could maybe do something with an external hard drive, or swappable hard drive but it will just get messy.
So I decided on a laptop, especially as this will let me work overseas occasionally both for business and when on holiday. But 90% of the time I intend to use the laptop really as a portable hard drive - external mouse, screen, keyboard etc.
The MAC hardware gets consistently good reviews, good support, and only thing close might have been an IBM looking at my research - but hey that is the dull choice.
So at this stage my plan is to use it 95% for XP. It's a shame but with only a 120Gb hard drive (using 90Gb on the Dell and climbing) at the partition stage I am gonna need to make a life or death decision.
I think I am gonna need to give Mac OS the bare minimum size (reinstall it to min size) partition as I cannot change things later! This in turn means I cannot really then install much on the MAC side - just maybe a few bits for playing.
Looks like I can add some software so that MAC OS can maybe see the files on the main XP partition (so play music etc?).
It sounds brutal but in fact once Bootcamp is loaded could I actually delete the MAC OS if necessary?
I am gonna give myself a few weeks for a gradual change over, so might play with the MAC OS a bit. Also will see if I can delete some of the junk on my main PC and go maybe 90Gb and 30Gb on the partitions at least to give it a chance.
Am I missing any tricks here?
I know that Bootcamp is only Beta, but apart from the partitioning dramas it sounds stable and I know as soon as I switch to a laptop I need to back up religiously (even if it was an IBM etc).
Two tricks to explore / things to know that might help....
1) MacOS can read and write FAT32 but can only READ NTFS. I've also heard that it is not possible at present to partition your HD three ways (i.e. NTFS WinXP boot, FAT32 data partition, HFS+ MacOS Boot), although that would be perfect. I'm not 100% sure about that. But I heard that BootCamp's bootloader would complain at having more than two partitions.
2) There is a program called MacDrive that should let the WinXP system read AND write HFS+. I've heard it works well, although I have not used it personally. If it works for you, it might mean that it makes sense to make a larger OS X partition and store documents and media on it, since both systems will have access....
1) MacOS can read and write FAT32 but can only READ NTFS. I've also heard that it is not possible at present to partition your HD three ways (i.e. NTFS WinXP boot, FAT32 data partition, HFS+ MacOS Boot), although that would be perfect. I'm not 100% sure about that. But I heard that BootCamp's bootloader would complain at having more than two partitions.
2) There is a program called MacDrive that should let the WinXP system read AND write HFS+. I've heard it works well, although I have not used it personally. If it works for you, it might mean that it makes sense to make a larger OS X partition and store documents and media on it, since both systems will have access....
Link here about using it with Bootcamp:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/bootcamp.asp
If it truly reads and writes to the MAC OS then I would have no grumbles with having a bigger MAC partition and sticking my 30Gb or so of music and other stuff there that could sit easily enough on either side (photos etc).
Anyone else usd this software as it is not 100% clear if you can use only to "transfer" files, or actually access them - such as playing MP3 files etc.
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/bootcamp.asp
If it truly reads and writes to the MAC OS then I would have no grumbles with having a bigger MAC partition and sticking my 30Gb or so of music and other stuff there that could sit easily enough on either side (photos etc).
Anyone else usd this software as it is not 100% clear if you can use only to "transfer" files, or actually access them - such as playing MP3 files etc.