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Choosing Parallels Over BootCamp for OS X
juusan writes "Sysadmin Jeremy Randall outlines his installation and impressions of Parallels for Mac OS X. Is it better than BootCamp? Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini? Does it pass the scrutiny of a fairly picky system administrator? Yes indeed, on all counts."
No. For starters, it can't directly access the graphics hardware, which makes it useless for almost any 3D gaming. It also uses an enormous amount of CPU time sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Seriously- XP, sitting doing nothing, nothing open- uses 20% of my Macbook's CPU. In Qemu (or rather, the Q Project build of QEMU), it's under 5%...and QEMU is emulating, whereas Parallels supposedly is using virtualization technology. What the hell?
If only Boot Camp and XP supported external drives (you have to hack XP considerably, unless you're using eSATA, I think)...
Please help metamoderate.
Friends of mine just switched. They have fiddled around with Bootcamp and Parallels. Personally I think this stuff sucks. If you're trying to give up drinking you don't take an occasional belt from your hip flask, even if everyone else around you is still drunk off their ass. I've seen this kind of behaviour with Linux users. They try the live CD, decide they like it and set up a dual boot system. After using nothing but Linux for a month they find they miss some app they only have on Windows (typically a game) and reboot to use it. Then they surf the web a bit with Firefox and may or may not notice how much better it runs under Windows. Reluctantly they reboot into Linux and feel the withdrawl symptoms. Soon they're installing VMware or Cedega but it's just not as good as the raw experience. A month later their Linux partition is just a big waste of harddrive space, so they delete it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Oh.. were you talking about parallels itself?
Ok, for everyone that thinks, i.e., assumes and doesn't know, that Boot Camp from Apple or Parallel's Desktop for Macintosh were created for gamers, you're dead wrong!
Neither product claims to be able to play games, nor offers much in the way of support for gaming. Although, Boot Camp and running Windows XP natively on the hardware will certainly give you a better chance of doing so.
These applications are for people (like me) who work in an office that is Windows abundant so they can run stupid, lousy, poorly written pieces of software like Outlook and can get on the Exchange server to do what they're already doing BETTER with an open source product running someplace else. It's also for those of us that need access to applications like AutoCAD from time-to-time or some other application that only runs under Windows.
Yes, for some, the desire to play Windows-based games is driving them to these products, but they're no where near ready for that crowd. Parallels Desktop is RC2 and even though it has a version number of 2.1, it's really the first revision for the Intel-based Macs. Boot Camp, well, it's clearly labeled on the web page as "Public BETA", i.e., use at your own peril.
Please stop bashing a product simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do even though it wasn't designed (or intended) to do that task. Parallels is a very capable virtual machine application and is very easy to setup and use. As someone who has used a dual-boot system as his primary machine, I can tell you (IMHO) the Parallels product kicks dual booting in the ass! Dual boot is fine if you're only going to use the one partition for gaming. If you're talking about a work environment where you need to switch back and forth fairly regularly, dual-booting sucks! Again, IMHO.
The main advantage to Parallels for me (I've been trying it since it initial release, btw) is the simple fact that I don't have to reboot to run Windows. Bootcamp doesn't cut it, if I need to exit my computing environment just to work on a Visio document or some other Windows app. I don't want to lose access to the rest of my online world in those cases.
GPU performance is important for a lot more than games, and will continue to become even more vital in the future. Heard of Vista Premium? A lot of people also want to be able to run graphics-intensive CAD, Photoshop, etc. style apps. I never said every component ran slower, but buying a machine with a decent graphics card and then using Parallels to lose that performance benefit might make sense to some users who value not having to reboot over having the full power of their machine, but there are plenty of people who'd rather not deal with that limitation, especially on a piece of software that isn't free.
Actually, the "start your Mac up in Windows XP" is a direct reference to Boot Camp. The last sentence really belongs in the following paragraph and I'd have worded it differently, but there it is.
Beyond that, there's a certain quiet genius in the ad. They're pushing Parallels because it helps the publisher make money, but it also achieves an OS X marketing advantage. Not only does it cost more to buy Windows+Parallels, but it doesn't run exceptionally well--OS X will always be faster. Both of these reduce the use of Windows on Macs without resorting to active malice. It fits in with the strategy of allowing but not encouraging Windows use.