Slashdot Mirror
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."
The application looks like something from Windows 3.11
And really, not much more to read in the article. If he actually were a picky sysadmin, he'd have looked at such points as "can the VM access the host drive, and how can I stop that". If he had a more than cursory interest in it, he would've looked at DirectX support. He couldn't even be bothered to figure out if his Mac supports certain features.
(Don't get me wrong - that's an indicator that Parallels is fairly good. He doesn't even have to care if some things work or not. But that's certainly not "in-depth")
Everything TFA has to say.
1. It works pretty good for a version-1 app.
2. It doesn't work well with external USB drives.
3. You get the occasional "beach ball" if you are running other apps on the OS X desktop and have only 1 GB of RAM.
4. The author is "platform agnostic" and really, really wants you to know that.
5. Rumors are flying that Apple might buy them and incorporate this into 10.5, but then again, maybe not.
Everybody who read my summary instead of clicking the link just saved 5 minutes. If a few million of you did so, I just saved a whole bunch of of entire lives!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
Or VPC because that's all it is. It's just a virtualizer. The advantages are you don't need to leave your main OS, you can have multiple guests, even runnig at the same thing if your system is powerful enough, and it probaly supports some kind of snapshot system, like VMWare. The disadvantages are of course the same as with VMware, mainly speed and hardware support. At least until VT support gets ramped up or hypervisors become popular you aren't going to get anywhere near native speeds. Also at this point the hardware in VMs is pretty low level. If you have a nice pro 3D card or multi-channel audio card, your guest OSes will not have access to their features.
Like Boot Camp, I think Parallels it getting more hype than it mertis just because it happens ot run on OS-X. Yep, it virtualizes a computer and lets you run Linux or Windows at a reasonable speed. Ok great, same thing as VMWare on a Linux or Windows host. Certianly not worthless, but nothing that's really news.
Use a native install (Boot Camp) if it's speed and access to hardware that are the prime requirements and you are willing to spend time booting back and forth. Use a virtualizer if you just need incidental access to the other OS and can take teh speed hit.
And it does everything I need it to do, and does it well. I can VPN to my company's network and can run all the software I need to get my work done, and it runs plenty fast. It also handles the older games I still play with no noticeable problems (starcraft, civ 3, etc). I plan to try out some new games like Oblivion soon, just to see how well that runs. I'm not as optimistic about that, however.
:) I avoid computational and memory intensive stuff on the Win2K VM, so that potential downfall doesn't cause me any trouble.
The key advantages to me, over using something like BootCamp, is that I don't have to reboot my machine to access my Windows only stuff, and I minimize my risk of cross contamination. I'm less likely to hose my OSX install if I destroy my Win2K install (which I am prone to doing).
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.
- Hardware accellerated graphics - doesn't need to be perfect or native-speed, but anything is better than software (I hate the current redraws when resizing windows)
- Direct HD partition support so we can boot off the same 'system' and have the same applications and data, with the only thing needed being a seperate Hardware profile in Windows - would make things a lot easier to use and convenient (Boot directly into windows for games, boot in Parallels for work, as needed)
Plus I would add a third: bring the price back down to $49.99 as it was originally.Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini?
Why is this even a real question? The Mac Mini is nothing but an Intel Yonah (Core Solo / Duo) CPU system with an Intel 945 Express chipset (and integrated Intel GMA950 GPU), and EFI instead of a BIOS. Hardware wise, it's an exceptionally common Intel system.
They are meant for different markets.
Parallels is for people who need to run OS X and Windows at the same time.
Boot Camp is for people who need to occassionally run Windows separately from Mac OS X. For example: games, secure environments, people who just want to use Apple hardware with Windows, and have nothing to do with OS X whatsoever.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
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.
TFA says NOTHING about Parallels being better than Boot Camp; the only reason he cites for wanting to use Parallels instead is to save room on the main disk. Since Parallels fails entirely on his external drive, it doesn't even accomplish that modest goal.
Aside from some fairly vague comments about the VMs being "fairly snappy," there's no indication of performance. From what I've heard, Parallels doesn't even come close to Boot Camp on that front, probably because Apple ported its own drivers specifically for Boot Camp so that all the hardware would work at full speed.
Also, Parallels costs $49.99. Boot Camp is free.
Oh, and the author says that setting up the VMs is time-consuming and complex; Boot Camp, by most reports, is easier to set up than installing Windows on a 'regular' PC.
The only advantage Parallels has over Boot Camp is that it can be used for more than just Windows. However, that's not a reason to prefer it if what you want is Windows. Boot Camp is free, faster and easier to set up. There may be some other advantages to Parallels, but this (decidedly mediocre) article doesn't mention any of them.
Using Parallels is an easy way of installing Linux or Windows. In terms of raw CPU, it works efficiently, with little overhead. However, OSX has a hell of a time with paging and big processes, so get a lot of memory and still be prepared to watch the spinning cursor for a while while switching to/from Parallels.
The Windows setup gets slow for some unknown reason. It gains unwanted features like Sony DRM and the CoolWebSearch toolbar. Pretty soon the Windows partition is just a big waste of space.
For me, it was when my NT4 setup got hacked over the local network. Probably the C$ administrative share had something to do with it. (WTF was that for anyway? I never asked for that. I disabled it many times, but Windows would helpfully restore the damn thing.) Fortunately I had NT4 on D:, making the c:autoexec.bat vandalism harmless. After that though, I would always physically disconnect the network cable before booting Windows. Pretty soon I took to leaving Mozilla running for weeks in Linux.
A rather superficial review. As a long time user of VPC on my G4 PB(s) and now using a MacBook Pro 15" (2 GB Ram) I can honestly say Parallels is good for a first off product. While it supports DirectX 2D it does not support DirectX 3D (no I'm not a gamer!) I have a Windows marine navigation application which uses DirectX 3D and it does not run on Parallels. I suspect that support will be forthcoming but it probably will target DirectX Version 10 (Vista). I've been able to access USB peripherals (LaCie DL DVD writer, Keyspan USB to Serial addapter). Fidelity is good, stability is good, performance is excellent and this is with the released product for which I have a permanent key. I also have Boot Camp installed and it works well and does support fully DirectX 3D. My navigation application works well under boot camp. The only hassle is the separate disk partition and the reboot. Windows XP runs well in this environment and wireless networking came up without a hitch! The peripherals which don't have Apple supported drivers yet (USB camera, ambient light sensor etc.) are really not a problem for me. So for full fidelity Boot Camp is the go. For everything else Parallels wins hands down!
I've been using Parallels Workstation for the Mac (or whatever they call it now) for a couple of months now. I admin a respectably-sized Active Directory and radmind'ed Mac network. We also have a dozen or so OpenBSD servers in our closet, so having a machine that can work with Windows, Macs, and has all of my fun UNIX tools is great. For years I've had two or three boxes connected via a KVM, but this is superior. I have a dual-display set up with my Intel iMac, with Parallels (WinXP) in one display, and the MacOS in the other. I can share files between the two, and I don't need to fiddle with a KVM switch, which never really seems to handle USB device removal/insertion very well.
This is the ultimate test of Parallels in my mind: I am running the Exchange 5.5 Administrator tool on my Mac (we have a legacy 5.5 install that we're migration away from). Do any of you realize what a perversion this is? It runs great!
Oh, and the Parallels team is super-responsive to bug reports. I am quite happy with this product.
Parallels lets me run any Windows version + apps inside a window on my OS X desktop.
Being a web designer, I can now do all my work on Mac OS X and switch back and forth to Windows + Internet Explorer in seconds (to check how barfingly ugly my work will look to MSIE visitors). Well worth it's money, even though gaming is not supported.
Boot Camp is just total nonsense in my situation. I'm just NOT willing to reboot for anything.
Lastly, Parallels with Windows XP Home Edition with no running apps takes up 6-7% CPU on my 1,66 GHz Core Duo Mac mini.