Some parallels questions

Hi guys. I am switching soon in fact, when Leopard comes out
For some windows apps I was considering to buy Parallels and only use the coherence mode. I would skin my Ms Windows XP windows with an apple skin, so the programs would look like "native mac programs"

Anyways, here are my questions:
I am using Linux rightnow and ever since I've used linux I was trying to get my VM to run my native windows installation (which I dualbooted through GRUB)
but I didn't get it to work. So now I was wondering if I could do this on my mac with Parallels:
*) Install Windows through bootcamp
*) and then, use the native bootcamp installation also in the parallels VM.

That would be GREAT!
Is that possible? - I can't find any info about it on the parallels web page. maybe I've not looked close enough

Last question:
For financial issues, what would YOU do? Would you buy a copy of Windows XP Home or would you buy Windows XP Professional?

Thanks for any comments!
Flo

While it is possible, it is still not 'there' yet. Cause every time you use the bootcamp image, you have to reactivate your windows copy due to the hardware changes (bootcamp and parallels have different hardware profiles).

Why not just use parallels as it is? It's pretty simple enough. Pop in the disc, and it installs on it's own.

Oh, that is not good.
But it is still possible? Do you, maybe know Anti-Spy XP, with that little tool, I know you can "uninstall" or eliminate the activation process.
Would that be possible then?

You are right, why not just use parallels on its own Well, I was just thinking that if I want 100% of the machine power for certain things, like gaming, that I could also use bootcamp to natively boot into windows.
A friend of mine told me that there was not much difference between parallels and a native windows installation, which I can't really believe, cause the hardware has to run 2 operating systems at a time. What are your experiences? Is there not really that much difference?

And what are your thoughts on the question about XP Home or Professional?
Thanks in advance
Flo

I've read in a (german) article which compares the features XP Prof. has and XP Home hasn't that it is not possible for XP Home to handle more than 1 CPU.
http://www-pc.uni-regensburg.de/systemsw/WinXP/xphome1.htm

Would it be better then to buy a copy of XP professional, even though it's way more expensive than XP Home?
Has anyone already run XP Home under parallels on a Macbook with an intel Core 2 Duo?

Any help is highly appreciated!
Greetings
Flo

If you use VMWare Fusion to access Windows XP Boot Camp partition, then you just have to activate Windows twice. Not every time you boot it. You have to activate it when you first install Windows on the Boot Camp partition. Then you have to install VMWare Fusion, VMWare Tools, and then reactivate Windows.

VMWare Fusion is also much faster then parallels and the Unity mode works better than Coherance mode from Parallels. I use XP, Vista, and Ubuntu images and all work well in VMWare. It has also been in the vitualizaion market longer then anyone else so its software is alot more mature.

I'll also throw my hat in the Fusion ring.

I don't know what your circumstances are, but if you can get a student license from your shcool/college/etc. then the software doesn't need to be activated at all (although you still have to go through the Genuine Advantage thing, it will pass even if the school has just burned you a copy). I'm sure a student license will be cheaper too.

Thank you guys, for your good responses!
I did not know a thing about vmware fusion! - I knew it though through Linux, but in Linux I didn't get the native windows install to work with vmware fusion!
Question:
Is it easy to get a native bootcamp installation of windows to work with the fusion VM? Is it just as easy as almost any other thing you do on the mac?
Or is it like in Linux, that you have to do a THOUSAND command line commands, get into the partitiontables and stuff...

Thanks for your responses.
Flo

Flavian said:

Question:
Is it easy to get a native bootcamp installation of windows to work with the fusion VM? Is it just as easy as almost any other thing you do on the mac?
Or is it like in Linux, that you have to do a THOUSAND command line commands, get into the partitiontables and stuff...

Thanks for your responses.
Flo

Click to expand...

If you have a BootCamp partition installed, when you boot up Fusion, it will see it as a virtual machine. Boot it from there and it will go through a one-time-only installation of the VMWare tools and then that's it.

I have had a bit of a problem with mine where it lost a certain file, and it now presents me with two bootcamp partitions, only one of which has the file it needs. I'm sure re-installing/updating to the latest version would sort it out, but I use it so infrequently I can't be bothered for such a small inconvenience.

Wow, thanks! That sounds pretty easy to me
Did I understand it right? : Install windows via bootcamp - start vmware fusion in OSX, go through the install routine of a new virtual machine (which is the bootcamp image) and that's it?

I've one last question:
Win XP Home or
Win XP Professional ? What do you think?

One last thought!
(Sorry for posting again)
Wouldn't I need a Win XP 64 Bit Version to run on the mac (in both bootcamp and vmware)?

Flavian said:

Wow, thanks! That sounds pretty easy to me
Did I understand it right? : Install windows via bootcamp - start vmware fusion in OSX, go through the install routine of a new virtual machine (which is the bootcamp image) and that's it?

Click to expand...

That's it.

I've one last question:
Win XP Home or
Win XP Professional ? What do you think?

Click to expand...

I have Pro simply because some of the software used on my course has problems with home; so that's what they give me.

If it's only gonna be used for the odd program, I don't see why Home wouldn't suffice, but if you want the Pro features (honestly I don't know what the differences are, but then I'm not really a Windows user) that's up to you.

Flavian said:

One last thought!
(Sorry for posting again)
Wouldn't I need a Win XP 64 Bit Version to run on the mac (in both bootcamp and vmware)?

Click to expand...

No, at the moment BootCamp ONLY supports 32bit versions of Windows (I don't know about Fusion/Parralells); the 64bit versions need different drivers (which most people don't bother making).

Flavian said:

Would it be better then to buy a copy of XP professional, even though it's way more expensive than XP Home?
Has anyone already run XP Home under parallels on a Macbook with an intel Core 2 Duo?

Any help is highly appreciated!
Greetings
Flo

Click to expand...

I have xp home running on a core 2 Duo macbook via Parallels.