I have a brand new MacBook, my first new Mac since my old Bondi Blue iMac. I've never run Parallels before, and can select any version of Windows (I have an MSDN subscription.) Which is the preferred Windows OS for this purpose? XP, Vista, Windows 7? 32-bit or 64-bit? I simply want to use it to occasionally run some Windows-specific software. Nothing too intense, mostly Office 2007 and a few other custom apps.
Hi Chris, If you're just using Windows as an "application starter" for Windows programs then Windows XP is still the best choice. Even though Windows 7 runs just as fast as XP on hardware the same doesn't seem to be true in virtual machines. So far, at least, Windows 7 appears to be faster than Vista in Parallels, but not by much. It's still much more subjectively slow at everything than XP for me -- even running it in a Mac Pro with two processor cores assigned to it and 2GB of memory. XP is much much faster and snappier in everything it does, including starting and shutting down, and you have the added advantage that everything in XP has been tested so thoroughly that pretty much everything just works. Vista should generally be avoided in virtual machines, there's nothing wrong with it technically, but it's much too slow and resource hungry. If you need specific features in Windows 7 or Vista then that can't be avoided, but for running Windows programs XP is really still the best option.
Thanks. I suspected XP would be the best choice for the reasons you gave. I installed it and everything went without a hitch.
I've got Windows 7 running smoothly under x64. Interesting though.. I just finished setting up an x86 Vista VM and it feels much faster and responsive (GUI wise) over Windows 7. For XP, avoid 64bit (unless you've already got a copy of it or it's free or something). It's considered more of a technical release than an end user release. There's nothing really wrong with it, but you may encounter software compatibility issues you wouldn't have under XP 32bit. (I realize this is an old thread..)
