Macbook and bootcamp/parallels

Just wondering how well a mac book can run windows using either bootcamp or parallels? I got the 1400$ white macbook....2.16 ghz, 2 gigs or ram, and 120g hd.

they guy at the apple store said that running windows would be very slow on the macbook but i have heard that they can handle it well...just wondering what u guys thing

Not sure why he would say that, it will fly through XP with no problem. I am a huge advocate of Boot Camp myself. Only advantage to Parallels is that its faster to just open up Windows. Drawbacks are that it taxes the ram pretty heavily to run both OS's at once. I prefer having my computer dedicated to one OS at a time...

While I use my Parallels VM mostly to show people that I can do it, and with 2GB of RAM it works rather well. Usefully well. I have the Windows XP VM on standby in case I don't have my work-issued Dell to do work-like things when I'm out on the road.

And by standby, I literally mean that. I boot up the VM and let it load all it's stuff, then once it's allocated all of it's resources, I can suspend the VM and quit Parallels. Next time I need it, I just launch Parallels and resume the VM. It comes back pretty quickly. I do whatever it is I need to do with it, then suspend it again.

While it's running, I can do other things in MacOS that I usually do. So it's really like having two computers for the price of one. An awesome computer that can do awesome things, and an okay computer that serves the whims of the owner under the auspices of the awesome computer.

When the VM is suspended, it just occupies 8 gig of disk space, and if I really need that space I can just drag it to my external disk for the duration, then drag it back to where it lives to use back on the road.

For the most part I find Parallels works well. I think it depends what you need to do in Windows. I need it to play poker, and do not notice any problems except with one particular site. I have to assume it is the site causing the problem and not Parallels as it works well with other sites and 90% of the time with the dodgy one. But you can trial Parallels and try it for yourself if you have a spare copy of XP or Vista lying around.

Windows in Parallels runs fine on a MacBook, I don't know why the sales guy would say that either. And like walkerj I keep my XP and win2000 VMs on standby so I can fire them up whenever I need them.