FAO Mac Owners

[toasty]

Any of you running windows XP via Boot Camp or Parallels? I'm wondering how it runs with 1 GB of RAM. With parallels, how does it work if you have programs open in both OSs at the same time?

[asdf_admin]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

what chip set do you have Toasty?

[toasty]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

what chip set do you have Toasty?

well, I have no chip set right now at all. I was planning on buying either a MacBook or a MacBook Pro, and was trying to figure out if I needed to upgrade to 2 GB or RAM or not, or if 1 was sufficient...

[asdf_admin]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

I know with bootcamp you can only run one OS at time. So if you want to swap you need to reboot. With parallel ... I am not exactly sure. If you are buying an apple ... please wait Toasty. I have been following macrumors and there are updates coming ... probably when leopard comes out. I am also in the market for a Macbook or Mac Pro.

[toasty]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

I know with bootcamp you can only run one OS at time. So if you want to swap you need to reboot. With parallel ... I am not exactly sure. If you are buying an apple ... please wait Toasty. I have been following macrumors and there are updates coming ... probably when leopard comes out. I am also in the market for a Macbook or Mac Pro.

Thanks man. Definitely waiting for Leopard -- I've been reading up on it, too, and it looks like it ought to be due in the next few weeks.

Parallels allows you to run both at the same time -- a guy was sitting next to me at a meeting had it and was flipping back and forth. I was stoked, b/c I've always been a mac guy, but the realities of my job are that I need to be able to run Windows-based applications. Looks like now I can have both, just trying to figure out if I can get away with 1 GB or RAM or if I need 2.

[Kamal]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

^^ Holy shit so you have 2 windows and you just switch back and forth between Mac and Windows ??

Screw PC, I'm DEFINITELY moving to Mac next year.

BTW do you have a link for this program / app Toasty ?

[toasty]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

Here's the link:

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

Here's a review, too:

http://www.macworld.com/2006/06/reviews/parallels/index.php

Big pimpin', seriously...

[Kamal]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

Thx the links. I think I will be getting the 15" mac book pro for christmas.

[Caley Martin]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

Supposedly in the next version of Parallels they will be giving partial 3D support as well...

[toasty]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

Supposedly in the next version of Parallels they will be giving partial 3D support as well...

right on -- although I'm not really a gamer and I don't use CAD, so it probably wouldn't make much difference to me, right?

[Troklo]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

I run windows on my mac via Boot camp and it works just fine (play lots of games, half life, doom 3, etc..), I think 1gb is more than enough, Parllels is good if your not running big programs, if so its better to run them with boot camp.

[Troklo]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

Oh and like asdf said if your going mac wait until leopard comes out

[asdf_admin]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

http://www.macrumors.com/

this is really the cool link for apple products. based on history and model release it kinda gives you a base for when new models will come out. I am pretty sure when Leopard rolls out apple will update their product line. This something constant they do.

link: http://guides.macrumors.com/Buyer's_Guide_(time-ordered)

In regards to 1 gig or 2 gig ... tough call. I would tell you to go with 2 gig just because the way they have the slots available in a mac book/mac book pro. If you are going with a mac pro I would not be concerned just because you have more slots aval and you can buy more memory.

There is a method to their madness, there are two slots on the Macbook, so if you go with 1 gig make sure it is a 1 gig stick, sometimes apple will toss in 2 x 512 to give you the 1 gig. Now when you want to upgrade to 2 gig you have to buy all new memory and you can not expand with the current that you all ready have. so be very careful in your selection. I believe the mac books come in the 1 gig stick. the mac pros come in 2 x 512, but they have many slots aval so you can expand on the with just buying more 512. so pick your battle carefully.

[beanzncheez]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

Just go with 2GB. It's not like it's gonna hurt you to be prepared. Ha ha.

[futura]

Re: FAO Mac Owners

right on -- although I'm not really a gamer and I don't use CAD, so it probably wouldn't make much difference to me, right?

I went with a MBP 17" when the Core 2 Duo's were rolled. They run cooler and it performs great.

I run Parallels regularly with 2 GB of RAM. I think you should go 2 GB. The reason is this - when you run Parallels the config asks you how much RAM to allocate to the windows virtual machine. If you imagine your Windows machine running on X amount of RAM - you want to make sure it has that much to entertain itself.

I allocate between 900MB and 1GB of RAM to the Parallels and Windows performs fine. I run two XP boxes, and a Vista Parallels. Never run them all at the same time, as I'm sure performance would suffer.

On one of the XP I do video editing withy Sony Vegas. Works awesome. I have a LaCie firewire 800 drive that holds my content, which I share right from the mac through Parallels.

On another XP I do software development with visual studio 2005 and sql server 2005. Works awesome.

On the Vista box, I haven't decked it out yet and moved there for dev, but it runs Office 2007 and general stuff. You don't get the Aero interface on Vista (but may if Parallels gets the 3D stuff going, since it needs directX.)

to be clear, Sony Vegas doesn't need DirectX, and video playback is perfectly fine. However, any software (games, but some other stuff) that requires DirectX may not run. There is a very minimal DirectX emulation on the Parallels VM, but like the full-on DirectX 9/10, etc. will not have any 3D acceleration.

The MBP 17" w/ 2GB RAM works awesome, and is a productive powerhouse for me.

I'm looking forward to Parallels supporting the 3D acceleration, as well as multi-core support. Right now, your Parallels VM would run on 1 core of your box.

You know, waiting for Leopard to avoid the upgrade cost may be worth it. I'm guessing Apple will release new hardware. However, if you look at what's available in hardware - Intel hasn't released any new chips - no super-new-tiny hard drives are available... so really other than some lip-gloss, I'm not quite sure what would come out in the MBP range.

I've heard new ipods... new Mac Pro's (the Mac desktop models)... and possibly new MacBooks.

I'm guessing the MBP will not have a major new release with Leopard, and even if they do, will be just some fine-tuning.

I'm happy with my second-gen Intel MBP running the Core 2 Duo (Merom) and it works great.

I only say all that because if you run it on a MacBook, make sure to pull up that matrix/table that Apple has comparing all their products. The MacBook has on-board video - the MBP has a dedicated ATI X1300 video card... and so on. You get better expandability. I wanted to make sure I had flexibility long-term.

No doubt, you'll not regret your choice.

Kamal, you should move. I've read your other posts and note that you're an avid PC guy. The Mac at least on the laptop front is awesome. I still can't say I'd go there with my desktop though... it's just too pricey and you can custom-build a PC for cheaper.

I love it.

Enjoy.