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    Parallels or Boot Camp + XP or 7-64?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Gartor Bob, Jul 25, 2011.

  1. Gartor Bob

    Gartor Bob Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'll only use windows for Adobe Creative Suite 5 (Photoshop is 64 bit) and one or two other windows-only programs.

    Should I install Parallels or Boot Camp ... and briefly, why?
    Should I install Vista-64 or Win7-64. (I have both.

    Thanks!

    Gator Bob
    The Gartor typo goes back a while. :)
     
    Gartor Bob, Jul 25, 2011
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  2. doh123

    doh123 Without ME its just AWESO

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    You don't install Bootcamp... its just a utility you use to get Windows installed directly on your Mac like any other Windows machine. You can then either Boot into Windows, or into Mac OS X, but not both. When you boot up Windows this way, its like any other Windows PC.. you can do anything you can do on Windows on any machine because it basically is a Windows PC at this point.

    Parallels, VMWare, and VirtualBox are virtual machines. They are basically a virtualized computer running in software, then you install real Windows inside of the virtual computer. This is not the same as installing using Bootcamp, as this is just running Windows in software on top of Mac OS X. Performance will be much more limited, especially with GPU performance... and it will take a lot more resources to run, so it can bog the whole machine down a lot more... but you can run Windows and OSX programs at the same time.

    and Win7 anything is better than Vista anything...

    If you really want to switch to OSX, usually Adobe will let you do a one time transfer of a Windows license for CS5 over to the Mac version for no charge.
     
    doh123, Jul 25, 2011
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  3. ygohome

    ygohome Notebook Deity

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    I have win7 64 Ultimate in parallels via my bootcamp partition. Meaning I can access my win7 environment via a parallels vm inside of OS X or I can boot into Windows 7 natively using the Win7 bootcamp partition.

    I can get to an XP Pro envirornment via Win7 xpmode (essentially an xp vm - but you need Pro or Ultimate) if I need to acccess something that requires IE6 or any windows app that simply won't work in Win7.

    Anyways, point being that you can set it up however you like. Lots of options for you to choose from. But I've never run those adobe tools you speak of so I cant give any advice as to which setup is best for you. *in which case my post here is kindof useless. ha.

    But I do agree with doh123 about not using Vista, unless you just happen to have an unused copy (but even then I'd be inclined to get a win7 64 license).
     
    ygohome, Jul 25, 2011
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