Running Parallels and Bootcamp: Can I pull this off?

[FluJunkie]

The Setup:

Looking at (as in, this Saturday) buying one of the new MacBook Pros. One of the huge driving factors is the ability to run Windows on my machine. I'd prefer XP...the less I have to deal with Vista the better.

What You Have to Work With:

Out of the Box, Pristine MacBook Pro. The upper end model.
2x Firewire Hard Drives, one 40gig and one 120gig
External Display, sundry peripherals

My Requirements:

I have two different requirements, which is what is making me want to install both Parallels and Bootcamp. On one hand, I'm a gamer. I'd like to be able to run PC games on my Mac and, from the experience of various folks, Parallels has been distinctly underwhelming. My own personal experience with Bootcamp and games (limited to some old PC strategy games + Dawn of War) has been nothing but positive.

-However- I'm also a graduate student. Most of my work is done on my Mac, in the OSX environment, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. But I need to run the occasional statistics program, preferably without reboots and constant switching. Hence Parallels.

How do I go about installing both, and in what order? My plan was to install a small Bootcamp partition with XP on it, use an external drive for the majority of the Windows application and document storage, and install Parallels. Will that work? And how?

 

[CANEHDN]

This is definitely possible. You don't have to do it in any order, other than have OS X installed first. Since OS X comes pre-installed you are ready to go. You might want to re-install OS X if you would like to easily get rid of the extra crap Apple puts on there, such as additional languages. I've noticed that a lot of people here do that. Other than that you just install XP on Bootcamp and Parallels in any order.

 

[Chef Medeski]

This is definitely possible. You don't have to do it in any order, other than have OS X installed first. Since OS X comes pre-installed you are ready to go. You might want to re-install OS X if you would like to easily get rid of the extra crap Apple puts on there, such as additional languages. I've noticed that a lot of people here do that. Other than that you just install XP on Bootcamp and Parallels in any order.

I saved 10 GBS! Thats a lot of space. Garaeband on its own is like 6 GB! So yeah I would suggest re-install. Than partition for Bootcamp. Then final step is Parallels. Really doesn't matter. But me I like to do my formating, partitiongin first.