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Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: December 5th, 2007, 4:40 pm
by cheryl
If I wanted to run a few Windows-only programs, which route should I go? Which is easiest to set up, and equally important, easiest to remove if I don't want it anymore.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: December 19th, 2007, 11:34 pm
by mrkramer
Go with bootcamp, and if you want virtulization later Parallels can use your bootcamp partition.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: December 19th, 2007, 11:37 pm
by Turboladdade
I actually would vote for Parallels first, simply because Parallels forms a "protective barrier" between the virtualized PC environment and the rest of your Mac.

I've heard a lot of stories of people messing up the Boot Camp process, losing their Mac partitions, being unable to remove Windows, etc...

Plus it just has a *dirty* feeling to it.

I've tried Q before, by the way, and found it like impossible to use.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: December 31st, 2007, 4:35 pm
by macuser77
Boot Camp was much improved when the 1.2 beta came out. The drivers finally worked. I wish I didn't need to post in this topic, but alas, my tech support gig requires me to run a Windows machine.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: February 9th, 2009, 6:12 pm
by kriegvision
This topic is a little old but now we have a really great option IMHO, and that is Sun VirtualBox. It is free, and works very well. It even supports OpenGL hardware acceleration.

My vote is VirtualBox all the way!

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: February 9th, 2009, 6:16 pm
by Turboladdade
Since I last posted in this thread my vote has also changed to VirtualBox. I use it every day to see how my websites and software turn out in Windows. It gets updated very frequently, and has the backing of a major industry player. It works really great, and has features you'd expect to find in payware.

Sun VirtualBox Website

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: April 7th, 2009, 6:07 pm
by JayVig
If you decide to use BootCamp, do you back everything up first? How many people have created a bootcamp partition with all their data sitting on OS X without protection?

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: April 18th, 2009, 4:26 pm
by Him
From my experience, it has to be BootCamp. For many reasons;

A) Unlike Parallels it doesn't crash easily.

And it's pretty easy to boot up.

I'll have to check out this 'Virtual Box' thing.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: April 18th, 2009, 4:31 pm
by JayVig
just need another copy of windows now so i can play.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: April 29th, 2010, 12:32 pm
by len57
I had used Bootcamp for several months and wound up with a corrupted Hard Drive. With the able assistance of an Apple CPU expert & due to Time Machine back-up on my Passport, the result was full recovery. NO MORE BOOTCAMP.

I need windows in order to run Van Basco MIDI/Karaoke software. Am in the process of evaluating NETBOOKS or perhaps better to enable Windows use. Appreciate the tip on Sun Virtual Box and will take a look.

Will appreciate any suggestions regarding Van Basco.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: April 29th, 2010, 5:01 pm
by chasm
Have you tried Crossover to see if that will work for you?

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: May 11th, 2010, 6:52 pm
by len57
Downloaded and installed Virtual Box & then installed Win 7. So far so good. Virtual Box comes with extensive support data in the download. The Van Basco MIDI Software i was trying to get to work works great.

ONE PROBLEM- Unable to figure out how to get Win7 to recognize and work with External Floppy Drive connected to Mac through USB. Same for External SD Card Reader. Will appreciate any advice.

Thank you.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: May 11th, 2010, 7:31 pm
by Turboladdade
len57 wrote:Downloaded and installed Virtual Box & then installed Win 7. So far so good.
I don't know specifically how to address your problems, but do you have any screenshots of this? How would you say it performs? I had Windows XP installed on VirtualBox on my Mac Pro 2.66, and I remember it being satisfactory, but now I have Ubuntu 10 on the same system and it performs really really badly - much worse than my 1.6GHz single-core Intel Atom econobox PC.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: December 30th, 2010, 8:57 am
by len57
My Win 7 on virtual box now works flawlessly. One problem I have is my inability to increase the size of the screen. It is very small and a bit difficult to work with.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: December 30th, 2010, 9:23 am
by wove
Make sure you have installed the Virtual Box additions for Windows. If you are running it in a Window, clicking the CD icon in the tool bar at the bottom of the window should show an option to mount the "additions". Once the additions have mounted you can run them or in the case of Windows they might well just auto run.

After the additions have been installed you can use the Windows Control Panel to resize your screen. Also after the additions have been installed, you should be presented with new options for the screen size and behavior when Windows boots.

bill

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: January 5th, 2011, 2:01 pm
by leonAzul
I echo chasm: If you just need to run few programs, an emulator like Wine might be more than enough. For Mac OS X there is a very easy to use system for reasonable cost called CrossOver, or you can work it out yourself for free with WineBottler. By only packaging the elements of Windows that provide the programming support for the software, there is a significant benefit in performance and ease of maintenance.

Among virtualization programs my favorite is VMWare. It offers utilities for converting volumes to image files and other features that matter to me.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: January 12th, 2011, 12:05 pm
by betatester
I've been using the Mac for many, many years, even so, I sometimes need the benefits of some obscure Windows only app. I've used VMWare Fusion for quite a while (and before that VPC), but if I were to do it over I'd go with Virtual Box because Fusion is quite invasive and, according to Little Snitch, is constantly calling home and M$ even when it isn't running.

On a different note, Where I can I use WINE, using either WineBottler or WineSkin. Both of these are freeware, the latter is open source. WineSkin builds everything into one bundle including X11. WineBottler relies on OS X's built-in X!!. Each one has it's own pro and cons.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: January 12th, 2011, 6:52 pm
by leonAzul
Having had a chance to check out the 4.0 version of VirtualBox, I am now reconsidering the evidence. Had this been available 13 years ago it would have been my #1 choice all along.

Also, I need to correct myself: WINE Is Not an Emulator ;)

ETA

Q is optimized for accurate hardware emulation, not real-time performance. It is designed as a multi-platform development tool rather than a production VM.

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: September 2nd, 2016, 2:11 pm
by wordpress
Turboladdade wrote:Since I last posted in this thread my vote has also changed to VirtualBox. I use it every day to see how my websites and software turn out in Windows. It gets updated very frequently, and has the backing of a major industry player. It works really great, and has features you'd expect to find in payware.

Sun VirtualBox Website
VirtualBox is still the best even after so many years. Very easy to setup and use for basic needs

Re: Best Windows on Mac Options

Posted: May 11th, 2020, 1:00 pm
by MacPat
For what its worth at this point, in my experience when I worked at the Genius Bar, Virtual Box has some very bad kernel extensions and can cause some serious problems for your Mac. I had to help a lot of students and even some "professionals" to remove and setup some other solution.

I personally am a VMware user for the limited things I need to use on Windows or if I need to run a Linux distro. It works really well and is easy to work with. Virtual Box has always seemed a bit inscrutable to me, and always required some sort of guide to get things setup or reconfigured by comparison to the intuitive and polished nature of one of the bigger apps.