best of both worlds?

Hey,
I got my Macbook second hand a few weeks ago and am majorly loving every little aspect of it which make it perfect for college and soon university.
However, I have previously been a PC user and have a small collection of much loved games which i would like to somehow play on my new Mac, These games are Civ IV, Rome Total War and Sim City 4, nothing too graphically challenging but this seems to be impossible, my friends are also stumped as to how I could try to do this, any ideas as to what I should do?

Is your MacBook an Intel machine?

If so, you need Bootcamp, which comes with Leopard Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - Boot Camp

It partitions your drive into two and enables you to install Windows. Once it's done, your machine will boot into OS X as usual, unless you press ctrl. Then it will load Windows instead.

You will need your own copy of Windows though.

does the split of the harddrive have any major downturn on running OSX, I do have bootcamp but was unsure how adverse the effects would be.

The biggest real negative is that you will loose storage space on the OSX side.

I'd suggest seeing how much space the games require and make your partition big enough for the OS, paging file, the games, and maybe a few other programs. I wouldn't necessarily divide the HD in half, but rather be selective on how much space is needed.

also, I'd check at apple and some of the stores that sell apple games, it could be that the games you want to play are already available for OSX - obviously, the more you can do on OSX the more you can ween yourself from the windows environment; and also the less space you'll need to dedicate for a bootcamp partition.

Another option would be to try Codeweaver's Crossover for Mac. A lot of more popular games are supported, and then you don't even need to bother buying Windows.

Just tried to Bootcamp to partition my hard drive but I am told that the hard drive cannot be partitioned and that I must format it as a 'single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume' What does this mean and how would i go about it?

It sounds like your drive is already partitioned. If it is, bootcamp won't work with it. The drive that bootcamp will install to needs to be a single partition.

I don't know if there is a way to combine the two existing partitions on osx.

The easiest way to deal with it is to do a re-install of OSX and go into disk utility at the beginning and make sure to partition the drive as a single partition.

by the sounds of this the moral of the story is, 'stick to the PS3'

hahahahaha! Well, it all depends on your system and how you have your drive setup. Bootcamp has some restrictions in terms of making it run right. In my case, not being on a laptop for my main system, I had bootcamp just use one of my 320gig HD's in my Mac Pro entirely for Windows for the games I wanted to play (which I am working on weening myself from ).

For those with only 1 drive, yeah - options more limited.

You might look at VMWare. It may be a better solution. It runs Windows in a virtual machine on the Intel Macs.

jakerich said:

You might look at VMWare. It may be a better solution. It runs Windows in a virtual machine on the Intel Macs.

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Unless it requires any 3D support. While there's some 3D support in both Parallels and Fusion, it's weak at best and very limited in the kinds of games it can play.

I honestly think CrossOver Games is your best bet. No need to buy Windows, and no need to run it at all or partition your hard drive. Just make sure you check the compatibility list to ensure it works with your games.

If your drive is already partitioned for some reason, you can use Boot Camp to make the whole drive OS X again, then make a new partition of whatever size you want. Not sure if that's what you're asking, but I know that's how you get rid of a partition and do it over again.

Mizzuru said:

by the sounds of this the moral of the story is, 'stick to the PS3'

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Yes. Notebooks aren't meant for gaming. Macs aren't meant for gaming. Mac notebooks REALLY aren't meant for gaming. At least the ones with integrated graphics. That's changing with the newest MacBooks that have the nVidia 9400M, making it passable for less demanding games, but anything older than that is basically incapable of running anything other than 2D or flash games.

Mama Luigi said:

Yes. Notebooks aren't meant for gaming. Macs aren't meant for gaming. Mac notebooks REALLY aren't meant for gaming. At least the ones with integrated graphics. That's changing with the newest MacBooks that have the nVidia 9400M, making it passable for less demanding games, but anything older than that is basically incapable of running anything other than 2D or flash games.

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While I agree with your overall sentiment, the GMA950 Mac notebooks can play some 3D games. Sure, you're not going to play Crysis, but something like CoD2 or WoW will be fine.

Oh, if you want to remove the existing partition and start all over, just open Boot Camp Assistant, and when it asks you what you want to do, choose "Create or Remove Windows Partition" and go from there.

That's just if you create one yourself. If your drive was already partitioned, I'd guess that you have to reinstall Leopard. You might want to take it to the Genius bar just to be sure.

Also, check the stores/online etc. There may very well be a Mac version of the game you want to run. I believe Civ IV and Rome Total War both have a Mac version.

Of course, this most likely will require that re-purchase the game.

Mama Luigi said:

Yes. Notebooks aren't meant for gaming. Macs aren't meant for gaming. Mac notebooks REALLY aren't meant for gaming. At least the ones with integrated graphics. That's changing with the newest MacBooks that have the nVidia 9400M, making it passable for less demanding games, but anything older than that is basically incapable of running anything other than 2D or flash games.

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Wow really? My MBP can handle anything i throw at it in terms of gaming. Crysis, Fallout 3, Call of Duty 4, Need for Speed Undercover, it rivals my Xbox 360.