Mixing Windows and Leopard

OK, so at least at work, I still have to use Windows to some degree. What is the best way to do that? Well, there are several. Apple's decision to move to the Intel platform has opened up the possibilities for making use of Windows. Here are your options:

1. Bootcamp
2. Virtual Environment
3. Bare Metal
4. Remote Desktop

1. Bootcamp

Bootcamp is a feature of Leopard which gives you the ability to very easily set up a dual-boot environment between Leopard and Windows (XP or Vista). One starts up Bootcamp in Leopard and it partitions a part of your Mac hard disk. After that it reboots your Mac and you load in a Windows install disk (yes you have to own one) and you go through a normal Windows installation. Once done, the Leopard disk is used to load in Windows-based drivers for the Mac hardware. After this is done, you can choose to boot between Windows and Leopard. I was very impressed with how easy this was to do and how well XP ran on my Mac. I did this on a Mac mini with 1 GB RAM. Still Windows booted and ran well and I had no issues of any kind running XP on the Mac hardware. The downside of this is that when you "need" Windows, you have to boot out of Leopard.

2. Virtual Environment

There are two competing programs that create a virtual environment for Windows to run on top of Leopard. They are Parallels and VMware Fusion. VMWare is probably the most well known player in the Virtual Machine (VM) market. We run a number of our servers in a virtual environment and it seems to work well. I've used their desktop product for years and love it. However, Parallels was really the first to market in the Mac environment. There are differences between the two products, but the premise is the same. A VM is basically a file that lives on the host Operating System (OS); in this case Leopard. When you create the file from within the VM product it creates a virtual computing environment; with a certain size "hard disk", allotted amount of RAM and the like. When the program first accesses the VM file, the screen shows what is, for all intents and purposes, a PC booting. You drop in your Windows (or other OS) disk into the Mac's drive slot and when the VM boots it sees the disks and starts a Windows installation. All of this is taking place in a Window running on the Mac OS desktop. You run through a normal Windows installation and when you are done will see the Windows desktop sitting in a window on the Mac desktop.

The obvious advantage of this setup is that you have access to Windows without having to reboot your Mac. A disadvantage is that the VM can use a fair amount of disk space and can use upward of 700MB of RAM or more depending on the parameters you used when you set it up. Remember that a VM is like a real computer and uses resources as such. Both Parallels and VMware Fusion have a "transparent" mode which makes the integration of Windows and the Mac even more seamless. In this mode, the window that holds the VM disappears and the Windows taskbar can, if you wish, become a floating bar on the Mac desktop. Then each Windows' application, when opened, floats in within its own window just like it would on the Windows desktop. So imagine Safari and Internet Explorer sitting next to each other on the Mac desktop; way cool. When you minimize a Windows app, it drops down to the dock just like a Leopard app. There is also some sharing of resources between the VM and Leopard. For example you can store all of your documents on the Mac, outside the VM. In the VM the My Documents folder is still there, but instead of pointing to a folder within Windows, it points to the Mac documents folder...very nice.

Well, that's all for today...come back next time when I look at the other two options for mixing Windows and Leopard.