Which is better for my needs-Bootcamp or Parallels?

Hello-

I'm interested in running windows on my computer. I have 512 mb of ram, and am a total mac newbie. What, do you think, is better for a ram-starved computer with a novice user? Boot Camp or Parallels?


Thanks!

It depends entirely on how you want to use Windows on your Mac.

I suggest you pick up the May issue of Macworld-- it has an excellent article by Rob Griffiths with overviews of Parallels, Boot Camp, VMWare, and CrossOver. It will probably be on the newsstand and online within the week.

Best of luck!

If you need good graphics (Games and other 3D apps) you will need to use Bootcamp.

If you want to just run MS office I suggest you go buy the Mac Version, but if you have other Windows Apps that do not have a Mac version and aren't all that processor or graphics intensive, I suggest you use Parallels or VMWare.

CrossOver is still very much so in development, not a lot of apps work with it, but it is good if you are a web developer and need to see how your site will preform under IE6 (currently there is no support for IE7) and things like that.

--Cheers


EDIT: Now after re-reading your post I suggest you use Bootcamp for what ever you need, you really don't have enough memory to run 2 OSs at the same time.

Benjamindaines said:

EDIT: Now after re-reading your post I suggest you use Bootcamp for what ever you need, you really don't have enough memory to run 2 OSs at the same time.

Click to expand...

Excellent point. Parallels on a 512MB Mac (why do my fingers want to call it a 512k Mac? would be painfully slow.