Questions about Parallels

C

craigb6

Bit poster
Hi! Sorry I'm new here, so if I have put this in the wrong place sorry! I'm really interested in picking up a MacBook around August time and would run Parallels on it to run Windows and experiment with Linux. But I have a couple of questions.

1) I understand that there is no 3D graphics support, so games are a no no (I don't play games really anyway) but does this impact on say video performance playback in media player? Do visualisations in media player work in Parallels?

2) I would occasionally need to use a modem to connect to the net, so would get the Apple USB modem. Would I be able to get the net in Windows over a dial up connection?

3) I read something about 'Shared Folders'. Does this allow Windows to read or read/write to parts of the Mac formatted HDD? I might need to take files between OSs, such as photos, would 'Shared Folders' allow this? If I am 'up the wrong tree' how do you share files between OSs?

4) I was listening to the CNet Buzz Out Loud podcast and they mentioned the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) and how it could in the future disable Windows. Does running Windows in a virtual environment confuse it, and WGA has problems recognising it as genuine?

5) You can get Parallels for $50 until 15th July. Could I buy a license now and it would still be valid in say August?

Thanks, Craig.
 
craigb6 said:
Hi! Sorry I'm new here, so if I have put this in the wrong place sorry! I'm really interested in picking up a MacBook around August time and would run Parallels on it to run Windows and experiment with Linux. But I have a couple of questions.

1) I understand that there is no 3D graphics support, so games are a no no (I don't play games really anyway) but does this impact on say video performance playback in media player? Do visualisations in media player work in Parallels?

2) I would occasionally need to use a modem to connect to the net, so would get the Apple USB modem. Would I be able to get the net in Windows over a dial up connection?

3) I read something about 'Shared Folders'. Does this allow Windows to read or read/write to parts of the Mac formatted HDD? I might need to take files between OSs, such as photos, would 'Shared Folders' allow this? If I am 'up the wrong tree' how do you share files between OSs?

4) I was listening to the CNet Buzz Out Loud podcast and they mentioned the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) and how it could in the future disable Windows. Does running Windows in a virtual environment confuse it, and WGA has problems recognising it as genuine?

5) You can get Parallels for $50 until 15th July. Could I buy a license now and it would still be valid in say August?

Thanks, Craig.
Click to expand...

With respect to Games: I have a MacBook with 1GB of ram with XP Home. I've had no real luck with running games in the Parallels XP side. The Pinball game that comes with XP runs fine though. Other games install but did not run. The Windows Media Player works OK. I've been to a number of web sites where it plays the content quite well. However, don't expect DVDs to play. I don't think that feature is in Parallels as yet. Mentioned as a possible improvement for version 3.XX.

Shared folders works great. I pass movies, photos etc back and forth, especially my Tivo TV files which you can only access on the Tivo player via a Windows system. Tivo doesn't have a MAC version. I retrieve them via my wireless connection to my MacBook WinXP side...make the necessary modifications and then xfer them to the Shared Folders where I can play them on my OSX side. I believe you have to select FAT 32 for your windows volume format to do this. Check the Paralles docs. Works great for me.

VG
ps: make sure you get at least a GB of ram. I've found the optimal setting for me is 384MB ram for XP with the rest going to OSX. When I had it 50% each OSX seemed to choke a little.
 
Thanks for the reply! I was considering either 1GB or 2GB, and was going to allow XP either 512MB or 1GB in RAM. Do you not get a performance hit with 334MB of RAM? I currently have 768MB RAM in my XP lappie, and it flies, so would I be better to have slightly less RAM?
 
As for Ram it is optimal to give Windows (or any other VM in parallels for that matter) the MINIMUM amount of RAM that allows is to run well. OSX is RAM hungry and much, much more efficient using it than Windows. giving too much RAM to your windows VM will result in OSX slowing down which in turn results in Windows slowing down. I've found for office productivity type apps, 256 meg allocated to Windows is quite fast.
 
Blackbook 2GHz, 2GB ram here.

Contrary to popular belief, games *can* run on this machine, so long as you don't expect to be able to run high detail. I run WoW on the mac side just fine. On the Windows side (BootCamp), WoW also runs fine, as well as Guild Wars and City of Heroes/Villains. What was most surprising to me was that Halflife 2 is actually very playable, although a loading/saving bug causes it to crash every time an area loads, or you save the game. Most likely that's a memory/driver issue with the integrated graphics chipset. Of course, Parallels doesn't pass through the video calls, so 3d apps are generally out under that. If you want to play games, keep a BootCamp'd partition around.

The Shared Folders thing is basically like passthrough filesharing. Simple, easy, and works like a charm.

IMHO, Just Say No to WGA. I'm not trying to start a flamewar, just saying that I'd prefer to keep anything that allows a remote person to make my machine unusable as far away from my machine as possible.

You'll definitely want lots of ram. If you can afford it, go for the 2GB, as it makes a very large difference in the overall speed of the Macbook. (Also remember you can find much better deals on good ram out there than from Apple, who'll want $600 for the 2GB in-store. I picked up 2GB of ram, a 100GB 7200rpm drive, *and* an external enclosure for the original drive for 2/3 that. Shop around.) VTMac is correct that you'll want to make sure OSX gets the lion's share of that ram. I allocatte 512MB to each of my VMs, Windows and linux, which is working out quite well.
 
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