having windows for office

Im planning on picking up a macbook pro some time in the near future. I just took advantage of picking up office 2007 ultimate for windows for $60 using that http://www.theultimatesteal.com site for students and it has been working great. I was wondering how many people run windows in VM or parallels for the use of office from windows. I keep hearing how buggy office 08 for mac is and Im liking the new office and plan on using it. Have there been any performance issues using VM or parallels instead of bootcamp, or should i just boot up windows with bootcamp to work in office? I have a dv6500t special edition lappy which I was planning on selling, but i might keep it and use is as my windows/office machine and my future mbp for rec/personal use (internet, photo/video editing).

What do you guys/gals think and thanks for your responses!

 

VM and parellels will be slower than bootcamp since you are running dual systems at the same time, but not too much slower for office.

 

Should run fine, you might want to invest in 4 GB of memory to allow both OS X and Windows to run with 2 GB of memory when using VMWare or Parallels.

 

Do you guys having any experience using vmware or parallels with windows? Are there any problems concerning laggy windows etc using this technique to run windows for office?

 

i had parallel 3, it's not laggy at all, depends on what kind and how big of programs you running.

 

o ok...thanks...one more question...has anyone used CrossOver Mac for office? If so, is it compatible with office 07? thanks again!

 

I've personally had no luck running Office 07 through Crossover. I've also found Fusion to offer a more stable VM experience than Parallels. If you're only going to run MS Office, you'll be fine with using 2 GB of RAM and using Windows XP through Fusion. If you want to do anything more intense than Office, it would be worth your while to upgrade to 4 GB of RAM or skip the virtual machine all together and run Windows through Boot Camp.

 

I would do both. Here is what I would do. If the only thing is just office, I would run a lite OS of XP with SP3 slipstreamed inside. Install this using bootcamp. Give Windows about 15GB's of space. Setup everything their and then allow Fusion to use your bootcamp partition and then you can access it with mac OS as well.

 

As others have stated, its wise to invest in upgrading your memory up to 4GB if you choose to run Windows in a virtual environment with either Parallels or Fusion. I've used Fusion only, and so far it's running like a champ. I give the virtual environment 2 GB to work with, and leave the rest for Mac OSX. Windows XP runs very well, even with somewhat intensive applications like Visual Studio.

 

Yea, if i was going to run windows in a virtual environment I would upgrade to 4GB of ram. Everyone keeps saying to run XP with fusion...does vista not work as well under a virtual environment?

 

Have you even tried Office 2008? I don't know if I'd go to the extent you're ready to go based on what you 'heard'.

 

I was thinking the same thing. Office 2008 SP1 appears to be at least as stable as Office 2007 IMO. Of course I have yet to play around with all the features but so far so good stability-wise.