Do you have Windows installed on your Mac?

[wordmunger]

Given the shocking early returns on the number of MR users who have Windows machines, I thought I'd start a new poll asking how many MR users have Windows installed on their Macs.

I don't have Windows on any of my Macs, and I was curious how many others are like me.

 

[David G.]

Games. That's the reason why I have XP installed on my MacBook.

 

[webgoat]

i think the majority of macrumors members who don't have windows on their mac won't bother to check out the windows on the mac forum, while the majority of those with windows on their mac will check out this forum... basically i think the results are going to be extremely skewed on the yes side to your poll

 

[displaced]

I've got a teeny-tiny Boot Camp installation of XP which I boot into for games, with the games themselves installed on an external firewire drive (I've got a MacBook Pro).

I also use Parallels with another Firewire drive packed with Windows virtual machines. I have two Visual Studio development VMs - one with VS2005 and the other for VS2008 evaluation. I take intermittent copies of my main VS2005 VM, since VS2005 has a tendency to eat itself occasionally. I carry that external drive between my work and home -- plug it into the company's Dell laptop running Parallels for when I'm at work, and bring it home for my Mac when tinkering at home (unpaid overtime... the bugbear of the geek). It's nice to have everything the same between work and home - just plug in and go!

 

[skinnylegs]

I have a PC I use exclusively for gaming. Everything else is done on my Mac.

 

[aross99]

I have to use a PC all day at work, so the last thing I want is Windows at home.

At a long time Mac user, there isn't really anything on Windows that I need. I used to use Virtual PC for some work things, but now I just use a VPN to connect to my WIndows PC at work, using the Remote Desktop Connection.

 

[Me1000]

I have XP running in parallels because I need to be able to get live updates with IE 5, 6, and 7 since internet exploder tends to ignore most web standards!

 

[lugesm]

I am running Fusion 1.1 and Windows XP when I need it on my iMac 24" Al machine.

Two reasons:
1. Some programs that I absolutely must use are not available for the Mac.
2. Some programs that I use (and are available for the Mac) are vastly superior in Windows. As an example: Quicken/Windows is markedly superior to Quicken/Mac.

I converted to Mac in Sept 07 and never looked back, but it would be delusional to suggest the Mac is superior to Windows for every job.

Both OS on my machine provides me with complete operational freedom . . . . and, I must comment, Fusion is a wonderful solution. Maybe in the future . . . . . . .

 

[Bobbi Flekman]

Depends on how you define installed.

For a living I do malware research and create programs to countereffect that. So I have Fusion installed, and have every possible Windows mutation since Windows 95 as a Virtual Machine (can you imagine what fun it is every second tuesday of the month...)

I have one XP Pro VM set apart to do things that I am not impressed with in OS X, but for the rest I am fully on OS X.

 

[chaosbunny]

I have a 32 gb XP partition on my iMac with Bioshock, Medal of Honor Airborne, Crysis Demo & Half Life 2 installed, but I only have time maybe about once a months to use it.

 

[sreedy]

Only my iMac is capable of running windows and I don't! I have no reason to use Windows in either Boot Camp or virtualization.

 

[Markleshark]

I have had a couple of times. Not much use for it though.

 

[Father Jack]

Like the previous poster, I did have it installed on a few occasions, but to be honest I'm glad to get rid of it.

I was a pc user for over 20 years ..

 

[autumn]

Just installed XP PRO SP2 yesterday....for games!

I have to say it's really weired to see windows on my mac...

 

[lugesm]

I have to say it's really weired to see windows on my mac...

My reaction, exactly. I find it rounds-out the missing functionality of my iMac; and, I must say, it runs much faster on the Mac than any Windows machine I have used.

 

[dsnort]

Since switching I have tried very hard to avoid anything that might require me to use Windows at all. I have been very successful at finding Mac versions or Mac equivalents for anything I want to do.

I can see a day when I might put Windows on one of my Macs, if my company suddenly requires some Windows only software.

 

[wordmunger]

Hmmm...

Maybe we need another poll asking how much time people spend using windows versus MacOS.

Still, given that apparently 70 percent or so of Mac users have PCs, I wonder why so many still have Windows installed on their Macs.

 

[nikopolidis]

I assume that all of those who has switched from PC to Mac have Windows on their Macs. Only a few initial Mac users have Windows, I suppose.

 

[Sesshi]

I do have Parallels or VMWare + Windows installed on all my Macs, but in the same way as I have OS X installed on some of my PC's I rarely use the alt-OSs.

To me there's little point with either: There are still some operational issues with OSX86 which prevent it being used truly effectively on a PC and why would I want an inferior (hardware-wise) Mac when I have slightly-to-vastly superior Windows hardware for entertainment or work?

Windows for PC's. Macs for OS X. Anything else is a compromise right now.

 

[bigandy]

I have several virtual machines on an external drive.

My XP Pro ones run a slimmed kernel - it boots in under four seconds, and resides happily in 30mb RAM. This helps a lot when you're running five at once

There are combinations of browsers in each one, for website tests. Everything from Webkit's nightly Windows builds in one, to IE5 in another. I keep them separate so if one kills itself it's a very easy, quick rebuild.

 

[mrwizardno2]

I have several virtual machines on an external drive.

My XP Pro ones run a slimmed kernel - it boots in under four seconds, and resides happily in 30mb RAM. This helps a lot when you're running five at once

There are combinations of browsers in each one, for website tests. Everything from Webkit's nightly Windows builds in one, to IE5 in another. I keep them separate so if one kills itself it's a very easy, quick rebuild.

Sweet. How'd you slim the kernel down?

I have a couple VM's I use. I always keep a BaseXP vm handy - just winXP with all updates installed - so I can copy it and provision it with whatever software.

I also have a development VM with visual studio 2008 installed, which I took a snapshot of so if it ever gets monkeyed up I can just revert to the snapshot.

And the last is my SLES10 VM - I'm studying for a certification at work and used it to practice a live fire exercise on. It's also handy for those "I wonder how do I do this on linux" moments.

 

[hopejr]

20GB Windows bootcamp partition for work, OS X for everything else. I reboot into Windows when I get to work, and then reboot into OS X just before I leave work each day (way faster just to hibernate Windows).

 

[nikopolidis]

I have Windows installed on my Mac. When I bought my first Mac, it was 3 months ago, I began to think about it straight away. It took me some time to decide thru what software should I run Windows.
Now I use combination of BootCamp and Parallels Desktop to run Windows and pretty happy with it. BootCamp serves me for gaming and Parallels for all another things.

 

[Queso]

I have a BootCamp partition running XP on my iMac, but it only let's me use it via VMWare as I messed up the activation. I keep meaning to rebuild it onto a virtual drive so that I can pause it like with Linux, but never seem to have the time.

 

[Flowero4ka]

I run Windows through parallels - no problems. Somebody plays games through Boocamp, but I use parallels and for gaming... It has a big list of games and for me it's enough.