Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long  |
One of our secretaries is now using a Mac mini running Windows XP, thanks to Boot Camp.
Also, one of our professors is running Windows XP inside of Mac OS X, thanks to
Parallels.
I've run Virtual PC on a Mac – I don't recommend it, it's rather slow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long I'm interested in following order:
1. Stability of Win XP applications in use on mac |
For both Parallels and Boot Camp, it's just the same as normal Windows.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long 2. "Faithfullness" to read and write Windows media especially burining CDs |
No problem with Boot Camp, full write access to CD/DVD burner. Unsure about Parallels, but probably OK.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long 3. Printer support especially printing postscript or graphics documents |
No problem with Boot Camp. Unsure about Parallels, but probably OK.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long 4. Ease of installation of Win XP applications onto Mac |
It's just like using a Windows PC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long 5. Ease of use of "special" keys e.g. CTL and functon keys using Mac keyboard |
We gave our secretary a Windows-compatible keyboard, but a Mac keyboard can do everything you need – it's just some of the keys are in different places. In particular, the "Windows" key and the Alt keys are swapped around. I think you can use software to swap them back again though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long 6. Performance of Windows applications in use |
Windows runs at full speed using Boot Camp, and at only slightly reduced speed using Parallels.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long 7. Speed of loading windows or applications (cursory reading suggests Bootcamp is a dual boot facility) |
All Macs with Intel chips are quite speedy, so Windows and application load fairly fast. On the Mac mini, because it has a laptop hard disk, it's not as fast as some desktops, but it's still not what you'd call slow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Long 8. Is it possible to write files to a shared partition to share in either mac or windows xp mode? |
Mac OS can read and write to FAT32 partitions, and can read NTFS. Windows can't read Mac partitions without extra software. So if you either make your windows partition FAT32, or have a external drive/USB memory stick, sharing files between Mac OS and Windows should be easy.
With Parallels, I think it can make Mac files available to Windows as a network drive.
There's a third option coming along too. VMware has just released a beta version of their virtual machine engine for the Mac – it has more or less similar features to the Parallels software.
(There's also a new beta release of Parallels that looks like it can make use of a Boot Camp partition – so you can either choose to use Boot Camp directly and boot into Windows alone, or from the same installation of Windows, run it as a virtual machine inside Mac OS X.)
Hope this helps.
