How good does Windows run on Mac?

I'm enrolled in a Computer Application degree program through college.

Most of the courses have Office applications that run, including Word 2007, Excel 2007, Access 2003 or higher, MS Visio 2000 or higher, Office Project Standard 2007, as well as a few others (Photoshop, etc).

Since I have such distaste for PC's, and we already own 2 Mac's (iMac and MacBook - both Intel), I am considering a Mac mini for my college studies.

My question is this...would I be able to adequately run the above programs installed under XP or Vista on the mini using Bootcamp, or eventually Parallels if I find the need to switch back and forth between them?

I am looking at the lesser expensive mini, but with the 4GB RAM.

Thank you!
Andy

It's better to run those kinds of applications through bootcamp. Virtual PCs use a lot of RAM and CPU power, especially on things like Photoshop.

That's what I was just reading. I don't really foresee the need to be able to switch between OS's so I'll stick with Bootcamp.

I use Sun's VirtualBox (free), and I'm happy with the performance...especially with Office stuff. I don't have PS, but I do use PaintShop Pro with no problems. I like being able to switch back and forth without having to reboot.

Windows on a Intel Mac under Bootcamp (which runs Windows Natively) runs as good as it would on the same hardware on a Windows notebook.

dtravis7 said:

Windows on a Intel Mac under Bootcamp (which runs Windows Natively) runs as good as it would on the same hardware on a Windows notebook.

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Cool. Thanks!

Office applications will run just as quickly in a virtual machine as they would under Boot Camp. Photoshop would be the only application to consider running natively under Boot Camp. You can, however, create a virtual machine from Boot Camp partition (better with Vista or Win7) and have it both ways. Considering VirtualBox is free and both Fusion and Parallels are very inexpensive, I would suggest you consider that. You really don't need to reboot for the Office suite and related apps.

Cheers

Spicy McHaggis said:

Since I have such distaste for PC's, and we already own 2 Mac's (iMac and MacBook - both Intel), I am considering a Mac mini for my college studies.

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Why do you have such distaste for PC's?

Anyway, since Apple made it so easy to run windows in their mac, why not just go the bootcamp route? Nothing to it.