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which windows?
- Thread starter Meric
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Not on the Macbook Air. XP doesn't support SSD properly, so they don't support or supply XP drivers for that distribution of Bootcamp. I believe someone posted a method of getting XP to work, but it didn't quite work right for me. But for reasons of SSD life, I'm gonna hold out until I get Windows 7.
You don't need 64bit xp for quickbooks. If you are going to run virtual machine do 32bit xp.
If you are using XP, go with 32-bit. 64-bit has too many incompatibilities since not many drivers were written for it. Windows 7 64-bit is OK, but if you are just running Quickbooks and also plan to run it only in a virtual machine, you might be better off with 32-bit Windows 7.
Good idea. I run Windows 7 in VMware Fusion's Unity mode. That way, I can keep Windows apps open simultaneously with OS X app. I use Quicken for Windows several times a day and leave it open on my desktop with Chrome, Mail, iCal, and Address Book. I also use WordPerfect 12, another Windows app, inside OS X. I believe Parallels can allow you to run Windows apps in the same way Fusion's Unity mode does.
The conventional wisdom is that running the 64 bit version of Windows in a virtual machine is a waste of resources. I agree. As a practical matter, you would never dedicate more than 2GB of your MBA's RAM to your windows VM. To start getting any benefit at all from the 64 bit version of Windows, it needs at least 4GB of RAM, which, for obvious reasons, isn't happening in a VM on an MBA.
Then again Windows 7 is current (vs XP) and I'm not sure 64 bit uses any more resources or storage than 32
. Parallels 6 has either sleep or pause for the VM which releases all resources (CPU and Memory) but almost instantly wakes up. Works great for me.Yeah, the beauty of both Fusion and Parallels is that they are laudably flexible and give their users a lot of tools for fine tuning installation. Fusion will allow me to pause Windows but I have learned that I am better off when I close Windows before I reboot OS X. It's no big deal because I ordinarily don't reboot more frequently than once every week or 10 days.Then again Windows 7 is current (vs XP) and I'm not sure 64 bit uses any more resources or storage than 32
When I installed Windows 7, I only devoted 1GB of RAM to the VM, so the 32 bit version seemed to be a better choice than 64 for me. Even with the 32 bit version of Windows, it was very slow and unstable until I upgraded the RAM on my MBP to 6GB and devoted 2GB of it to the VM. I still have the same 2GB of RAM dedicated to the VM on my MBA. It has worked well.