Windows Advice - Parallels/Bootcamp/VMware?

[SpaceJello]

I use windows once in a blue moon. I am curious what's the best way to do it in terms of least physical storage and memory requirements? I may install some PC only games for play - old final fantasy etc. I am on the MBP with 2gig ram but I am not sure if that would be enough for Vista/XP?

 

[brkirch]

2GB of memory is plenty. If you want to use Windows mostly for games then just use Boot Camp. Parallels and VMWare are really only good for older games. To decide if you want Parallels or VMWare just get the trial version of Parallels and the release candidate of VMWare. Right now VMWare has the advantage that it only costs $40 if you preorder, Parallels costs $80.

 

[SpaceJello]

Thanks, if i do bootcamp, how much space should I allot, and can I delete the bootcamp partition later on or change its size without affect my OS X partition?

 

[brkirch]

How big you should make your Boot Camp partition really depends on what you plan to put on it. I would recommend Windows XP, as it uses much less space than Vista (XP uses about 3 GB, Vista uses about 8 GB). A partition size of 10 GB would probably be enough. Format the partition with NTFS instead of FAT32 so if you decide you want to resize later though you can use Winclone to copy your Boot Camp partition to a disk image and Boot Camp Assistant to delete and recreate the partition with a different size. Then you can simply restore the image you created. Your OS X partition should be unaffected by this process.

 

[SpaceJello]

Awesome thanks, i will give that a try