[RsBrown]

I'm sure most of you don't get Macs b/c you want to run the "Evil Empire's" Windows, however, I must as it's my j-o-b. Absolutely love my new MBP but was wondering what most are doing out there (that do use Windows), running Parallels or running Bootcamp. I know the answer is really "it depends", like on how much you plan on running the apps in one or the other, gaming, etc. But from a pure performance standpoint, is the GUI responsiveness that much better under Bootcamp like I have been hearing? I love the Mac OS, much cleaner than Windows (never thought I'd say that) but not sure I can justify using just iTunes, Pictures, DVDs and of course the cool-a$$ remote control for the sake of any performance. I'm a web-app developer and need all the juice I can get.

Any other advantages disadvantages?

thanks much...

[eminton]

i dont have a MBP but have been playing with them at my college. and yes it becomes preference or depends on what you do with it. if you want to use heavy graphics aka games on the windows side they use bootcamp because parallels doesnt have the video support for it. you can have both though. if you just run certain things in windows at certain times and just need to stay on your Mac side, then get that and just use the bootcamp partition. with bootcamp, you get the full computer worth of power but i have had mixed reviews towards me that bootcamp is slower and isnt as fast as it should be, but i havent figured that out. as a web-app developer, you can just get away with parallels but yet again depends on what you are using in windows. parallels is like the virtual pc for powerpc processors.

IMHO- get both of them and use them at all times that you need them. i wish i had a MBP to be more helpful

[rtbarry]

run both. Parallels now has the ability to fire up the bootcamp copy of windoze, instead of requiring a separate instance of win for each. it is a beta build now, but should be a release farily soon. very slick.

parallels is great for all day switching back and forth on the fly. bootcamp for mission critical work that requires heavy use of windows specific peripherals, especially those that require dongles, etc.

[telf]

I heard parallels runs windows with only one core not duel and USB is version 1. Running bootcamp runs full duelcore and usb2.
all my PC adobe production studio apps work as normal in bootcamp.
you may want to check this out

telf

[mark.s]

Parallels is definitely fast enough for development. I'm running Visual Studio and SQL Server under Parallels without any issues. Just make sure you have enough RAM.

Boot Camp is obviously faster (and needed if you want to play games), but the speed difference isn't an issue for most tasks. Also, now that Parallels allows the running of Windows from the Boot Camp installation it seems, from my experience, to be quicker - it's using a native partition on the disk rather than a virtual hard drive stored in a file under Mac OS.

[ghporter]

You can do both. And ask about this in the Alternative OS forum-which is precisely what it's there for.

[rickey939]

I'm a big fan of Parallels, it's absolutely brilliant.

[sedlacek]

Also a big fan of Parallels. I use it to run a couple of windoze-only programs (Grams and MathCad) and for my data reduction needs Parallels is more than fast enough. Furthermore, with the release of the rev. 3036 (Beta), the folks at Parallels have given us even more reason to smile (e.g., drag-and-drop file transfer, coherence, dynamic changing of network adapter...just to name a very few improvements contained in this beta release). Once they get usb2, than all shall be right with world....

[Macola]

One other consideration, which may or may not be important to you: Running Parallels on my MacBook and just performing basic operations in Windows routinely raises the CPU temp to 65-75 C. Booting natively into Windows keeps the MacBook much cooler.

[arrannen]

I run both. the current beta of Parallels is wonderful and just as fast as running windows however the limitation is with the video card. hen I run parallels, I have only 16M of Video Memory available. so for basic stuff (CS2, Mojoworld and the like) its nice...

when I need more processor power (like for guildwars/games, high end 3D crunching I'll just boot into windows xp with MacDrive and It fully takes advantage of my graphics card/video memory.

the best of both worlds!

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally Posted by rickey939 

I'm a big fan of Parallels, it's absolutely brilliant.

Agree 110%. Parallels is fantastic. If you don't game, use Parallels - you will be pleasantly suprised with the experience.