Which version of Windows for a mac running Snow Leopard?

[Griseldajane]

Hi everyone,
I'm in quite a predicament and I hope for some advice from the forum. I have a brand new Macbook Pro lap top which comes with Snow Leopard pre-installed. There is no way to "downgrade" the OS. I've spoken with Apple directly.

I would like to partition the drive with boot camp and run Windows and a windows version of Maya. Here are my questions:

Will Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit OEM install on a brand new Macbook Pro lap top (via boot camp)? AND-- will Maya 2008 work on this through a mac? If not, what version of Windows should I buy? (My previous lap top is a five year old Powerbook G4 and I do NOT have access to a Windows machine. )

Also, I have read a lot about VM Fusion and I was wondering if anyone had success running Maya through that program? I realize it will be slow, but not having to restart the computer every time I need to switch programs is very appealing. I just want to know if the program will work at all and if it is worth purchasing for this purpose?

Please keep in mind that I do not know a lot about computer installation and I know absolutely nothing about computer programming.

I'm very frustrated by all of this (as I'm sure many others are) and would really like some solutions. I just want to get back to my work, you know?

thank you,

Griselda

 

[Eidorian]

Leopard 10.5.8 would run just fine on that hardware. It's just finding 10.5.6 retail media or another Mac to clone/image off of that's the hard part.

 

[gugucom]

Your MBP will run every Windows from XP-32bit SP2 upward to Windows7-64bit. Drivers are available for the same range of Windows minus the XP-64 bit version which will not be supported by Bootcamp.

For Maya Win7 64-bit Professional is probably your best choice because it will utilize all your RAM and requires the least updating. It basically runs out of the box and has all the features you would need for a virtual installation if you want to try that as well.

Use the Bootcamp utility and read the manual.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Many people choose this setup:

1. Boot Camp w/ Windows (XP 32-bit, Vista 32 or 64-bit, Windows 7 32 or 64-bit).

2. Install Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion (Fusion is better in my opinion, because VMware's target audience is the business market, where products meet higher standards than the consumer market).

3. Configure Parallels or Fusion to run off the Boot Camp partition. That way, you can boot into Windows or run it through a virtual machine. It's very easy to set up, just point Parallels or Fusion to the Boot Camp partition during the creation of a VM.

This way, you have greater flexibility. Obviously, just doing #1 is the cheapest solution; you don't need to buy additional software apart from a Windows license. When you're on Snow Leopard, you can launch Parallels or Fusion, and you have Windows. Or you can reboot into Windows.

For CPU intensive programs like Maya, I suggest you use Boot Camp. Virtualization can only go so far and performance won't be as good as natively booting into Windows. You can download a trial version of Parallels or Fusion, do #3 and see if Maya runs okay. But Boot Camp is my recommendation.