Windows XP on MacBook via Boot Camp - Experiences, please!

[crc-ict]

Hi All,

 

I have just ordered myself a MacBook after deliberating for a while about a new laptop.

 

I'm very interested in the capability of Boot Camp and running XP on the Mac and was wondering if anyone here has had any experience of doing this?

 

I'd be very interested to hear any comments, tips and suggestions from someone who's done it, both about the process and how it functions afterwards too!

 

 

Cheers,

 

Chris.

[GrumbleDook]

Carefully plan what you want to do with the XP side of things to allow for enought disk space ... I made the windows partition 10GB to start with and realised the cock-up I made ... I now prefer to give 20GB.

 

I also purchased MacDrive from MediaFour to allow me to access the Mac volumes ... this was money well spent.

 

It is very stable, but I found that some of the driver installs from the Mac Drivers CD had to be re-run three or four times until it was completely happy.

[crc-ict]

Thanks for that, Tony.

 

Got my MacBook today and just completed the install, decided to go for the full 32Gb Windows partition - small enough that I could still use FAT32 to share with OS X, but I think big enough for what I need.

 

Initial impressions are good - performance seems good and there is something strangely cool (in a geeky sort of way) about seeing XP on Apple hardware!

 

I opted for a refurbished model - saving about a third and getting a 2.0GHz machine with 1Gb RAM, 80Gb HD and DVD-RW for £600 - seems like a sound decision, although you lose that 'new' experience a little bit. Mine has some light surface scratching and some signs of being used, and you don't get that special Apple packaging experience. But the over £200 saved I think compensates - but only time will tell for sure!

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the process was simplicity itself, even managed to get it to work flawlessly with a slipstreamed XP Home Upgrade disc, despite the conventional wisdom online that it wouldn't work. There is a trick to using upgrade CDs - google is your friend here!

[Dos_Box]

My work is buying me a MacBook Pro 15" because we've suddenly decided that Macs are the way to go for many tasks and a lot of staff have now got them, ergo I need to support them too. I'm also running Parallels on it with both XP and Vista.

I like my work.

[crc-ict]

I like my work.

 

I bet you do!

 

I have trouble getting some of my schools to buy things we need in the school!

[GrumbleDook]

Personally I am using BootCamp on my Mac Mini at home ... to run Vista ... and the few missing drivers are a little annoying, and I now need to rebuild it as I have been playing around with a few extra pieces of software and it is killing IE7.

 

On my MacBook I run Parallels as I tend to use Microsoft's RDC to connect to the servers to do admin stuff (when I am allowed) and use XP/Server 2003 R2/Vista etc to test things ...

[HodgeHi]

i like parallels. I think it is perhaps the best way to run windows on a mac. With it now supporting the BootCamp partition as its HDD to boot from it means that you can have the best of both worlds. Bootcamp on a MacBook Pro gives you the full aero engine (if you want that sort of thing). I have not tested the bootcamp partition support but i assume that it would give a native VM since the hardware would be supprted through drivers already intsalled. Perhaps someone who has tested this can confirm what it is like?

 

I do like how you can drag and drop files from windows onto the mac desktop and Vice Versa without the need for any addidtion software. Very useful and teamed up with Virtual desktops gives you the ability to swing between the two OSes with just a keyboard shortcut.

 

Great Stuff.