Parallels/VMWare/Bootcamp - What and in Which Order

[Dembo]

I think most of it has been discussed here before - I am just trying to get an overview of the current concise opinions:

I have a spare XP Home license from a retired beige box that I would like to use on my 2.2GHz/2GB/120GB SR MBP. Main reasons for resorting to Windows (MBP is my first Mac and I love and it’s unbelievable how clumsy Windows looks after you’ve seen the light…) are:

- small residual bunch of programs that cannot be replaced with native OS X software (home banking being my main concern here…)
- some “older” games I have and would like to play (ranging from Starcraft to Warcraft III al the way up to Oblivion), by older I mean pre-DX10

So it comes down to virtualization and BootCamp. I suppose virtualization would not be fast enough for anything game related or wouldn’t it? It also appears that using BootCamp and virtualization will require two Windows licenses (bummer). If, however, I still decide to do both – what should I install first?

With respect to virtualization my main concern is the 120GB hard disk space – not much, I plan to upgrade some time next year but for now that’s what I am stuck with. Aside from the recent swing in opinions that VMWare is superior to Parallels: Is there any difference between the two with regards to required hard disk space? And how easy are they to uninstall? I remember trying to get rid of VMWare on Windows – not a nice experience.

Cheers,
Dembo

 

[xUKHCx]

For games you really should go with bootcamp.

You can use both VMware and Parallels running off the bootcamp partition, this does not require an extra license (althoght there may be issues with activating it, i personally have never had this problem, someone who has had this problem should chime in at this point. Or you could as questions over at te VMware forums if noone responds.). This has an advantage of having the best of both worlds, meaning you can quickly use windows through visualistation and you also get the speed by rebooting and switching into windows. This saves you space from not having to have both bootcamp and a VM taking up all your room.

As for space with both VMware and parallels the major space hog will be the installation of the virtual machine which will be the same for both programs.

For uninstalling, VMware comes with an uninstaller script which you run and it removes the application but i went looking around and found lots of hidden files and folders strewn all over my computer which i was not very happy about.

As to the VMware vs parallels, i personally prefer parallels but their customer support is basically non existant. Currently VMware is reasonably unstable on my machine where as parallels has been rock solid, only 1 crash in over a year. As VMware matures i am sure these bugs will be ironed out and this will make it the number one option.

 

[Dembo]

Thanks for the answer! I'll see how much I can squeeze onto the disk - a slim Windows install should be able to fit into GB 15, shouldn't it?

 

[xUKHCx]

Thanks for the answer! I'll see how much I can squeeze onto the disk - a slim Windows install should be able to fit into GB 15, shouldn't it?

I suppose it depends on the games installed. I have my windows installed in 7Gb partition as it is mainly for office and Fluent. I have changed the size of the partition using a tool called Winclone.