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From: John Hill on 7 Jun 2010 09:37
My wife has taken the plunge and bought an iMac. It is new and shiny,
fully up to date, with a wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse.

Nevertheless there are still a couple of Windows applications she needs
and we are looking into installing Windows 7 on her Mac rather than keep
the old PC going for them.

There seem to be three routes for this:

1. Boot Camp. This would probably do all she wants (the two systems
could be completely indpendent - there is no specific requirement to
move files from one to the other). And it is the cheapest option.
BUT, so far as I can discover from the Boot Camp Support Site, this will
only work with a USB keyboard and mouse. She could borrow mine to set it
up, but if these are also required to use it, that would rule out the
Boot Camp option.

2. Parallels. I cannot discover whether a USB keyboard and mouse would
be required, or if it could be set up and used with the wireless ones
she has. I cannot find anything in the literature that explicitly
requires USB kit.

3. Fusion. The same applies here - it there is anything that rules out a
wireless keyboard and mouse, I cannot find it.

What is more, I cannot find much that tells me how (2) or (3) differ in
what they offer. Fusion seems to offer a migratory path from the Windows
set-up to the Mac, but this would not be a consideration - almost none
of her existing files would need transferring to Windows, and anyway
they are already fully backed up on an external USB drive (we used it to
move what she needed to the iMac).

Most important, perhaps, is ease of use. Anne is well practised in the
use of Windows, but is climbing a bit of a curve in learning where
Windows XP and Snow Leopard do things differently. We don't want to make
this any more difficult!

Stability is the second most important. Her old PC had become very slow
and prone to problems. This triggered the switch.

Thirdly, she will need to be able to use her printer from the Windows
set up and also use mine over our network (Airport at the moment, but if
the old PC is decomissioned an Ethernet connection to the router will
become available). These are Epson all-in-one printers.

Access to the Internet from Windows would be largely for keeping the
software updated.

I would be very grateful for advice and opinions from any of you who
have used either of these options - and especially from anyone who has
experience of more than one!

John.

--
Please reply to john at yclept dot wanadoo dot co dot uk.
From: Chris Ridd on 7 Jun 2010 09:47
On 2010-06-07 14:37:35 +0100, John Hill said:

> My wife has taken the plunge and bought an iMac. It is new and shiny,
> fully up to date, with a wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse.
>
> Nevertheless there are still a couple of Windows applications she needs
> and we are looking into installing Windows 7 on her Mac rather than keep
> the old PC going for them.
>
> There seem to be three routes for this:
>
> 1. Boot Camp. This would probably do all she wants (the two systems
> could be completely indpendent - there is no specific requirement to
> move files from one to the other). And it is the cheapest option.
> BUT, so far as I can discover from the Boot Camp Support Site, this will
> only work with a USB keyboard and mouse. She could borrow mine to set it
> up, but if these are also required to use it, that would rule out the
> Boot Camp option.
>
> 2. Parallels. I cannot discover whether a USB keyboard and mouse would
> be required, or if it could be set up and used with the wireless ones
> she has. I cannot find anything in the literature that explicitly
> requires USB kit.
>
> 3. Fusion. The same applies here - it there is anything that rules out a
> wireless keyboard and mouse, I cannot find it.

There's also 4. VirtualBox. This is free, unlike Fusion and Parallels.
In all routes though you'll need to provide your own Windows.

For 2, 3 and 4 you don't need to worry about wireless keyboards and the
like, as Parallels, VMware, and VirtualBox all abstract that away and
show Windows "a keyboard".

Personally I prefer VMware over VirtualBox on the Mac, but only because
it ironically had better support for Solaris guests than VirtualBox.
I'd also read bad things about Parallels, and a colleague using an
older versions of Parallels complained about it using CPU while not
running. But it may be better now.

There's plenty of competition in virtual machines on Macs, which is great!

--
Chris

From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 7 Jun 2010 10:14
On Mon, 7 Jun 2010 14:47:17 +0100, Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com>
wrote:

>On 2010-06-07 14:37:35 +0100, John Hill said:
>
>> My wife has taken the plunge and bought an iMac. It is new and shiny,
>> fully up to date, with a wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse.
>>
>> Nevertheless there are still a couple of Windows applications she needs
>> and we are looking into installing Windows 7 on her Mac rather than keep
>> the old PC going for them.
>>
>> There seem to be three routes for this:
>>
>> 1. Boot Camp. This would probably do all she wants (the two systems
>> could be completely indpendent - there is no specific requirement to
>> move files from one to the other). And it is the cheapest option.
>> BUT, so far as I can discover from the Boot Camp Support Site, this will
>> only work with a USB keyboard and mouse. She could borrow mine to set it
>> up, but if these are also required to use it, that would rule out the
>> Boot Camp option.
>>
>> 2. Parallels. I cannot discover whether a USB keyboard and mouse would
>> be required, or if it could be set up and used with the wireless ones
>> she has. I cannot find anything in the literature that explicitly
>> requires USB kit.
>>
>> 3. Fusion. The same applies here - it there is anything that rules out a
>> wireless keyboard and mouse, I cannot find it.
>
>There's also 4. VirtualBox. This is free, unlike Fusion and Parallels.
>In all routes though you'll need to provide your own Windows.
>
>For 2, 3 and 4 you don't need to worry about wireless keyboards and the
>like, as Parallels, VMware, and VirtualBox all abstract that away and
>show Windows "a keyboard".

And note that there *are* issues with Boot Camp and setting up
wireless devices, it took me a wired mouse, three reboots and a lot of
googling to get my Magic Mouse to be seen by XP in Boot Camp. It works
fine now, so it is just a temporary thing.

Boot Camp is no fun anyway, since you need to reboot to go from one OS
to the other. Virtualisation is loads better unless you want to play
games (and if you do, VMware and Parallels can do a cunning thing by
running your Boot Camp installation in a virtual machine, and you can
reboot to Windows proper for games).

For virtual machines you're better off with XP than 7, you can make
the vm a lot lighter on memory that way - .5gig instead of 1.5gig,
really.

In case it's not obvious, big recommendation for virtual machines
here. Virtualbox is by far the least expensive, and perfectly capable.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't
believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
From: Jim on 7 Jun 2010 10:19
On 2010-06-07, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:
>
> Boot Camp is no fun anyway, since you need to reboot to go from one OS
> to the other. Virtualisation is loads better unless you want to play
> games (and if you do, VMware and Parallels can do a cunning thing by
> running your Boot Camp installation in a virtual machine, and you can
> reboot to Windows proper for games).

That's exactly how I run it (Parallels 5). Works fine.

Jim
--
Twitter:@GreyAreaUK

"If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you."
Terry Pratchett
From: chris on 7 Jun 2010 10:19
On 07/06/10 14:47, Chris Ridd wrote:
> On 2010-06-07 14:37:35 +0100, John Hill said:
>
>> My wife has taken the plunge and bought an iMac. It is new and shiny,
>> fully up to date, with a wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse.
>>
>> Nevertheless there are still a couple of Windows applications she needs
>> and we are looking into installing Windows 7 on her Mac rather than keep
>> the old PC going for them.
>>
>> There seem to be three routes for this:
>>
>> 1. Boot Camp. This would probably do all she wants (the two systems
>> could be completely indpendent - there is no specific requirement to
>> move files from one to the other). And it is the cheapest option.
>> BUT, so far as I can discover from the Boot Camp Support Site, this will
>> only work with a USB keyboard and mouse. She could borrow mine to set it
>> up, but if these are also required to use it, that would rule out the
>> Boot Camp option.
>>
>> 2. Parallels. I cannot discover whether a USB keyboard and mouse would
>> be required, or if it could be set up and used with the wireless ones
>> she has. I cannot find anything in the literature that explicitly
>> requires USB kit.
>>
>> 3. Fusion. The same applies here - it there is anything that rules out a
>> wireless keyboard and mouse, I cannot find it.
>
> There's also 4. VirtualBox. This is free, unlike Fusion and Parallels.
> In all routes though you'll need to provide your own Windows.

Yup. I second no.4. I trialled Win7 during the release candidate stage
and it worked fine in Virtual Box.

The one downside of going with any of 2, 3 or 4 is memory/RAM usage.
You'll need to have enough to accommodate OS X + Windows + all the Mac
and Windows apps you're likely to run simultaneously.

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