Parallels & Vista Business

As my university is a member of the MSDNAA, I was given a free copy of Windows Vista Business Edition, which I decided to install on my Macbook using Parallels.

Installation
The installation process took about 45 minutes (from booting from DVD to showing up of desktop) and required no user input at all, which in my opinion was an excellent and long needed improvement, because Windows XP installs required constant attention and usually takes over an hour to complete.



Vista Performance and Compatibility
The boot up process takes about 3 minutes (2 minutes longer than my XP), and I had to set Acceleration level to Normal (Configuration>Advanced>Emulation Flags) to prevent it from hanging during boot up.
However, once the desktop is loaded, the OS is fast and responsive.





Nevertheless, Vista still uses up at least 40% of my CPU when idle (sometimes 70% if the sidebar was on), double that of my XP.



And no, Aero and 3D accelerated screensavers do not work. Yet.

OS X Performance
It seems that the performance of my OS X is heavily effected when running Vista in Parallels. Everything becomes much slower in OS X (even typing this out has a 0.5 second Input delay) while Vista is nice and fast. This probably has to do with my lack of resources, as I have set half of my 1GB to be used by Vista.

Vista good???
I have to admit that I am impressed with Vista. Although it is still not as good as OS X (there's still the stupid registry, **** bios, annoying services, text rendering is still not quite right, etc.) it is a huge improvement over XP (for example, there is actually a menu in Control Panel to change startup items!).
I'm not very sure about the change of the start menu - it does not pop out to show folders etc. anymore. The Windows start menu and explorer has always been far superior than Finder in my opinion, as it was so easy and logical to use. I have my doubts regarding this new start menu however, and it's definitely going to take a while to get used to.

Will I use it?
Not on this Macbook. Or not unless performance increases. OS X becomes far too slow to use in my opinion with Vista running in the background. Perhaps I need to upgrade my RAM to 4GB and a 3Ghz Core 2 Duo OC or something before I can enjoy the full experience of OS X with Vista.
I'll stick to good old XP (runs fine with 128MB of RAM) for now.

 

Nice little review, thanks

One question though: is that "Product id" thing your key, and if so is it wise to show it off on the internet? Not sure how Windows keys work, not being a recent Windows user, so maybe there's no danger in this, it just reminds me of the people putting up photos where their credit card numbers are visible and things like that

 

Keep in mind that it might be Parallels helping you with the user interaction thing during you Vista install. An install of XP under Parallels requires no user interaction either.

 

The Product ID is not my Vista Licence Key. It is simple a Key of the version of Vista I have installed on my machine (you need it if you request MS Tech support, as they can determine exactly which version of Windows you have from those numbers).

Oh, didn't know that. I only use Parallels to boot from my Boot Camp XP partition.
I took a 30 minute break during the Vista install, and the desktop was up and running by the time I got back. That's the way OSes are meant to be installed in my opinion, if the user wants to change time/date etc, then there should be a wizard or something which will guide him through the process after the installation.
I sure hope it wasnt Parallels doing it for me, because it would give me yet another reason to dislike Vista.

 

Bud, How will you put in 4GB and a faster CPU (soldered in place). 3 GB would lose your dual channel capability! Surprised it runs as good as it is w/ only 512 MB. My AMD DT w/ 2gb DC @ DDR~520 is much slower in Ultimate than xp Pro. (>15% performance loss, maybe new stable drivers correct??)
Prod ID= is same for win XP Pro, just a OS type & `machine installed on' code for Bill's files?{corrections accepted}

BTW, oSUSE 10.2 took about 6 minutes to install to HD on my DT, but required reboot for network setup & user ID (couple of entries on my part!)

Think the time changes are all upfront, as data locked into registry for Activation time & expiration of free trials info.
Why would someone need a wizard to change the time? {U R Thinking like a real M$ user again, that needs to be led.}

You are not performing an actual HD install w/Parallels are you, where partitions are formatted. No, just a new way of installing from M$. My xp & vista overall time for real installs is about same, only real difference is formatting time.
* Have you timed xp Install on this machine in Parrallels, or is >1 hr referring to older, slower single CPU units?

Do not worry, there will be more if you run updates etc

 

Well, the Macbook only supports up to 2GB of RAM, so umm...yeah. That statement about the 3Ghz CPU etc. was a joke. I meant that I will not be using Vista as my primary secondary OS on my Mac. I'll stick to XP.

Whenever I (re)installed XP, it always automatically stopped half way through asking me to set the time and date and choose language options etc. Which was utterly idiotic in my opinion. I was not asked this during the Vista install (maybe due to Parallels), so I'm glad.

Boot Camp Beta currently does not support Vista, so I could only install it the Virtual way.

I remember well htat it usually took around 45mins to install XP on my ASUS (1.86Ghz Pentium M, 1GB RAM). Seeing as Vista is four times the size of XP, I am quite impressed with the installation time.

I currenly do not have a Vista Experience score, because it does not recognise my graphics card. Going to have to wait till Parallels starts supporting 3D acceleration before I can get a score I think.