I have a new Macbook on the way, and am a first time Mac user. I'm interested in installing windows on my MB but I'm not really sure what program is the best option for my needs. I'm not a big gamer so I'd really only use the windows side to use MS Office and programs that don't work on OSX. But my main concern is that I want my music to be accessible on both partitions. So what would be the best way to go about installing Windows on my new MB? Thanks
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What's the best choice for me?
- Thread starter impact1290
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for gaming your gonna want native speeds so install through bootcamp. to make music sharing between os's as seemless as possible, format the bootcamp partition when you are installing windows to fat32. you will need to make the partition less than 32gb. if u want after that u can virtualize that partition in mac with fusion or paralllels and then u will have the best of both worlds. just know that if u do that ur gonna have to spend some time on the phone with microsoft activating and reactivating windows up to 3 times. good luck
I'd suggest Parallels Desktop for your needs.
Sharing a music library between OS X and Windows is tedious to say the least. If you don't plan to do use any graphics intensive programs, virtualization is definitely the way to go.
At this point, I'm still suggesting Parallels Desktop over VMware Fusion because of the program's maturity. I've used both on a daily basis, and its my opinion Desktop is more stable.
Sharing a music library between OS X and Windows is tedious to say the least. If you don't plan to do use any graphics intensive programs, virtualization is definitely the way to go.
At this point, I'm still suggesting Parallels Desktop over VMware Fusion because of the program's maturity. I've used both on a daily basis, and its my opinion Desktop is more stable.
I have Parallels 2.0 and it works great. Though there is something about the way they pushed 3.0 without much information that didn't sit well with me. I will probably switch to VMware Fusion once they get their Vista activation bug fixed. I think Unity in Fusion is better than Coherence in Parallels (though I don't use either). Fusion doesn't seem to slow down every other program I run as much as parallels does.
Both VMs run super fast though and will have no problem running your windows apps. I have a thinkpad that I use for work, but when I'm at home I use Parallels with all my PC programs in it. Runs faster than my thinkpad
I suggest you try the demos out (they are full featured) and pick the one you like best.
Both VMs run super fast though and will have no problem running your windows apps. I have a thinkpad that I use for work, but when I'm at home I use Parallels with all my PC programs in it. Runs faster than my thinkpad
I suggest you try the demos out (they are full featured) and pick the one you like best.A lot of that is changed in the latest Parallels beta. Parallels no longer takes up significantly more CPU than Fusion, and Coherence now supports Exposé (with far fewer glitches than Unity has in Fusion) and minimizing to the dock. Also your settings are mainly what determine how much Parallels slows down other programs, and if you give Parallels too much RAM it will of course cause your computer to slow down.
Hopefully Parallels has made improvements in those areas, but as far as beta's go...I don't beta test
I paid for Parallels 2.0 and that is what I base my opinions on. I use it so that I can do by job from my MBP and not the Thinkpad that my company gave me. I don't want to switch to a beta and have something fail when I don't want to 
I'm REALLY surprised no one mentioned this already, but you can get MS Office for OSX. Not sure what "other program" that you run that don't work in OSX, but there's a good chance there's a comparable app available. The only stuff I've found that don't have decent OSX replacements are some fairly obscure database and accounting packages along with some somewhat specialized video apps.
My point is that there's a good chance you don't need Windows at all and can save yourself a couple hundred bucks and a lot of PITA.
That's a really good point mrgreen4242. Most applications do have an OS X version or something comparable from a third party. My initial assumption was that the OP was already aware of these alternatives and was opting to use Windows for one reasons or another. Possibly related to degraded performance related to Rosseta with Office, or perhaps an attempt to skip the cost of purchasing new OS X versions when the Windows ones will do just fine.
I'm kind of in the same boat as the OP, i.e., new Mac user looking to put Windows on my Mac to run some Windows programs. In my case, the need is for Quicken, which I have used for several years now. From checking around, it looks like Quicken for Mac doesn't really work unless you are starting anew, and it's difficult, if not almost impossible, to transfer data (especially investment files) from a voluminous Quicken PC database over to Quicken for Mac or any other similar program for the Mac.