Im considering buying a macbook pro and using parallels. 90% of my use of this machine will be on the windows XP VM. Im only buying the mac because it's purty and light. So, what is the realistic minimum amount of RAM needed to run the Windows XP VM on the latest Mac OS? Also, I own a version of Win XP but it was pre-Service Pack 2. Wlll my XP CD install and work on Parallels if it doesnt have Service Pack included in the CD. The reason I chose not to use BootCamp is that BC requires that the Win Xp installation CD has Service Pack 2 included. Thanks RR
RR, If you really are going to use XP 90% of the time and you're just buyng the MBP cause it looks nice, you might want to consider using Botcamp instead of Parallels. In Parallels you're not going to be able to run many games, especially DirectX games, you're not going to have iSight use, USB 2, Firewier etc. and generally you're windows experience isn't going to be as good.* Don't get me wrong I love Paralles and use it regularly but I only use XP or Linux when I have to. I'm much happier in OSX 95% of the time.* The MBP hardware isn't all that well supported in Paralels yet, like firewire, CD/DVD burning, Video, iSight etc etc.* Use Bootcamp and use the Apple supplied drivers for the hardware. Everything works very well and you can basically have a windows laptop. If you plan to use OSX regularly then Parallels is a good decision but the hardware expereince is definitely better with BC. Regardless get as much RAM as you can afford, at least 1G minimum. (Guys I know this is a Paralles forum and I love PD but frankly if you're going to use the MBP as a Windows laptop (why I'll never know) go with BC) Hope this helps, Peter
I agree with Peter. If you really want 90% WinXP then go with Bootcamp. You can set up Windows as the default partition to boot. You can still run Parallels if you want in the Mac OS X partition but again it won't be a gaming platform and it won't support lots of hardware devices. Also one thing to consider is that even under BootCamp things are not 100% Win Compatible either. I've blue screened Win XP a number of times in BootCamp. Not all the bugs are worked out. If you want WinXP and the most stable platform you can get probably a windows laptop would be your best bet. If there are things you want in Mac OS X land then yes the MBP with bootcamp is probably a good bet. But I have to say RAM RAM RAM regardless of how you go. I have 2GB in both my MBP and my MacMini and they scream.
