[Todd Madson]

I work at a company that typically has been Windows centric since day one but they
recently relented and allowed some Macs mostly with bootcamp.

A trainer who isn't really an IT person but doesn't know Macs that well
recommended to a person who was replacing a windows box to get a
Macbook Pro with Parallels and Vista Ultimate.

I understand the second they added it to our active directory resource domain
things started happening. Firstly, the Macbook only has 2 gigs of ram so Vista
only really has 1 gig applied to it. Secondly, our corporate headquarters on the
east coast basically demands that every windows machine run Symantec
Antivirus corporate edition (v2.00 for Vista) to be on our network, this is non
negotiable.

The problem is this system is apparently so slow as to be nearly unusable.
I NEVER in a million years would have recommended Vista, the vast majority
of machines on our network are XP Pro and every Mac is running Bootcamp
with XP Pro (typically non negotiatble but like I say, the person running this has
a considerable amount of political clout in our organization).

So far slowness isn't the only problem: the machine is constantly losing the
trust relationship to the domain and all kinds of weird problems are happening
that could very well be the fact that Vista is a shaky waterbed of an operating
system (I've set up and configured about 55 Vista machines in our enterprise,
I'm qualified to discuss it).

Now, here is where I come in: I've been asked as of friday to come in on
tuesday and:

(1) back up the Vista data.
(2) deinstall Vista/Parallels
(3) install Boot Camp
(4) install Vista again.

Frankly, I'm not sure the results here will be satisfactory. I believe part of
the reason for the slowness is the fact that Vista only has one gig of ram
available to it and it needs at least two, the other problem is (personally)
I believe Symantec antivirus corporate edition is a giant piece of junk that
will slow any moderately fast computer to a crawl but like I said, it's a non
negotiatiable thing.

So, does anyone who has experience with active directory networks, Macs
running Parallels with Vista have any positive experiences to report?

I'd love to say that "no matter what software you run, you'll run into issues
with Vista".

Frankly, the experiences I've had with Macbooks and the like in our enterprise
with Bootcam and XP are great - in fact, they typically run windows xp better
than the dedicated XP Pro laptop I was given by the company to work with.

Anyone want to discuss options? Adding ram? Bootcamp + Vista?
Bootcamp + XP Pro?

I want to stay away from VMWare because this won't be operated by me,
it's going to be operated by an executive type and his administrative
assistant.

Thanks in advance.

[PaperNotes]

I read some user reports that Parallels doesn't play nice with Boot Camp partitions that have Vista on them, so beware and research everything. Fusion with XP offers the best results.

[Todd Madson]

But ultimately parallels would be removed from the machine altogether.

From what I'm hearing, it sounds like boot camp/parallels don't really like each other.

Would adding more memory to the machine speed up the anemic Vista OS under
parallels or is the issue more like "wipe the machine and start over with clean OS X,
then add boot camp/vista".

Frankly, I'd love to eliminate Vista altogether but because someone made a
suggestion (who, IMHO, shouldn't have) we're stuck with it.

What is Fusion? It's possible this user may have an XP install somewhere,
it's probably going to force my company to fork out some $ to make the guy
happy or he will likely made it hard for them.

[PaperNotes]

VMWare Fusion is another product that like Parallels can run Windows on top of OS X from the Boot Camp partition or from a virtual disk image. It's faster because it supports multicore processors and plays nicer with Boot Camp.

I favor the dual boot option. Boot into Windows when it is needed and the same into OS X when it is required. If you must have both running at the same time then Fusion with 3-4GB RAM is better than the Parallels option.

Get your man to read this paragraph. Vista isn't needed. It's XP with a glossy skin and multimedia enhancements (Direct X 10). If you're not going to use those multimedia features there's no reason to use a resource hungry OS when XP is leaner and equally good at everything else.

[Todd Madson]

The problem is: the executive in question paid lots of money for Vista Ultimate based on a
recommendation by someone from our department. So we're forced to use it.

He's not the kind of guy you can go "Oh, I'd prefer XP Pro, go out and buy it please".
He already paid however much $ for the Mac, however much for parallels (that is
essentially being discarded) and $400 for Vista Ultimate (or whatever it's going
for these days).

It's primarily a political issue at this point that I need to undo what happened before.
I have one thing I can try to speed Vista up but the dropping off of the domain is the
main showstopper.

I suspect much of the slowness issues are ram related but if ram were to be
purchased and installed and it was still slow, the fingers would be pointed at me.

You see where I'm going with this? It's not an ideal situation IMHO because nobody wins.

[ghporter]

Boot Camp-based installations of Vista should be faster and more stable than ANY virtualization or other software solution, even with not enough RAM. However, the standard requirements for Vista include a minimum of 1GB of RAM, that's a minimum. To run the OS effectively the computer should have at least 2GB and more if possible. Installed natively on a MacBook with 2GB of RAM, it should run ok. Anything other than a native installation will indeed be crappy and unacceptably slow. Have the exec that decided Vista was the way to go read the minimums and then explain how overly optimistic Microsoft tends to be with "minimum" OS requirements-and in particular how LOW the "Windows Experience" will be with only the bare minimums.

Executive summary: Only a native installation via Boot Camp will provide even a satisfactorily productive computer; all virtualization schemes are flawed in one way or another for the MacBook's hardware to be effective and efficient. Better results are available through maxing out the computers' RAM (an inexpensive investment in worker productivity). Get technical people to provide technical suggestions-and make the ones who make the suggestions implement them. (That last one is a personal sentiment, but it often reduces "I think this would be cool" suggestions pretty drastically.)

[Todd Madson]

Part of the problem was the person recommending the Parallels/Vista solution was someone
who has, collectively, less than one year of Mac OS X experience.

Myself on the other hand my experience with OS X goes back to DP 4 and on the OS 9 world
back to 1984 or so.

I'm going to see if I can't do my original plan - Boot Camp + Vista if the one item that seems
to have been overlooked doesn't help.

[jrotondo]

Todd, I seem to be having similar issues with my MacBook Pro running Windows XP (the problems are both seen when using Parallels or when booted in Boot Camp). Network connections hang and sever when I'm connected to my company network. The funny thing is, the system runs just fine when I bring the machine home and connect to my Verizon FioS internet connection.

I'm unsure if this is the same "loss of trust" issue that you have been experiencing in Vista. Have you been able to solve your issues?