In article <190720081814341316%nonone@nowhere.zzz>, Noone <nonone@nowhere.zzz> wrote:
> I'm considering upgrading from a Powerbook G4 to a Macbook Pro.
You'll enjoy the upgrade immensly, I think. : )
> It's my understanding "Bootcamp" comes pre-installed but we have to buy > Windows and then install ourselves?
Boot Camp is simply a drive formatting utility that lets you create Windows (FAT32, NTFS) file systems on hard drives inside (or connected to) your Mac. The support needed to boot Windows is built into every currently-shipping Intel Mac. To use it, you'll need to create a Windows
If you wish to use Boot Camp, you should know that it will require that you restart your Mac to boot into Windows, and restart again to boot back into Mac OS X. With Boot Camp, Windows applications cannot run along side Mac OS X applications.
There are alternative solutions to Boot Camp that allow you to run Windows applications right along side Mac OS X applications *without* having to reboot! Another benefit is that they allow you to create virtual hard disk files on which to install Windows, which means you don't have bother with partitioning your Mac hard drive or buying an eternal hard drive. The virtual hard disk files are similar to disk images you already use on your Mac. They are simple files in the file system. Many Mac users find these alternative solutions preferable to dual-booting with Boot Camp. These solutions are called "virtualization" solutions.
Virtualization solutions have one major caveat: While they run most Windows applications at full speed just as if you were booted into Windows (and sometimes even faster!), neither offers much support in the way of hardware-accelerated 3D video. This means that Windows applications that use hardware acceleration will not perform as well as they would if you booted directly into Windows with Boot Camp. The good news is the two classes of Windows applications that require 3D video acceleration are Windows games and CAD/3D modeling applications. If you don't plan on running such applications, I highly recommend you consider using a virtualization solution to run Windows for the obvious benefits - mainly not having to reboot or partition hard drives.
Parallels Desktop:
<http://www.parallels.com/en/desktop/>
vmWare Fusion:
<http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/>
Feature-wise, the two are very similar. In general, I've found that vmWare Fusion is more no-frills and is compatible with more USB devices, while Parallels offers more eye candy, such as the spinning cube animation similar to what you see when you use fast user switching in Mac OS X.
> If this is correct, what is the best version of Windows to install?
You'll find most will tell you Windows XP - hands down - because it performs better and does not utilize as much of the hardware to do the same work. But you should also consider the system requirements of whatever Windows applications you plan to run. If one or more require Vista, you may be stuck with running Vista.
> I'm a student and keep getting class-related CDs to study with and of > course they're all PC only so this is one reason I'd like to upgrade.
It may be that some of these supposed Windows-only CDs are not actually Windows-only. If you give us a list, we can tell you more.
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