Apple/mac: dual boot w/ windows or VMware Fusion?

[Daryl RL]

Our son is almost off to college (major in business, minor in music) and decided on a Macbook for his college computer. Not the decision I might have made, but so what else is new!

The school is ok with either, but I'd feel more comfortable if we made sure he can access windows before he leaves next week.

So which way would you recommend? Anything to watch out for/avoid, etc.?

[dvenardos]

Sorry Daryl, going to laugh a little bit here, lots of people live just fine using Linux or the Mac OS. :biglaugh:

Unless your concern is his being able to play windows games VMWare fusion would be more convenient.

[Jon Liu]

Why do you feel he need access to windows? For any of the typical college stuff, he won't need it. There are programs on the Mac side that (in my opinion) do things as well if not better. If he's comfortable with the Mac, then that's all that matters.

I dual boot on my iMac and the only reason for that is simply to play games made only for the PC. Everything else I need to do can and will be done on the OS X side.

[Kevin R]

Our son is almost off to college (major in business, minor in music) and decided on a Macbook for his college computer. Not the decision I might have made, but so what else is new!

The school is ok with either, but I'd feel more comfortable if we made sure he can access windows before he leaves next week.

So which way would you recommend? Anything to watch out for/avoid, etc.?

You can also use Parallels which is what I use if I absolutely have to use Windozzze.

For gaming I would use Boot Camp because it'll run Windozzze natively whereas Parallels loads basic components (e.g. won't see total ram on vid card or system ram) I've never used VMware but I've read good/bad things about it...

[Daryl RL]

He's not much of a game player. Spends too much time with the music end of things.

The business school DOES say this (after saying that business students should follow the general campus recommendation which clearly says macs are fine):

"Undergraduate students should have systems that can run Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 suite of software

Undergraduate students in the Department of Business Administration will use additional Microsoft software such as Visual Studio, Project, and SQL Server. You will access the MS Developers Network Academic Alliance resources once you are on campus."

[jvgillow]

Most schools in that Microsoft alliance thing have free copies of Windows available as well. So don't go buy a copy until you absolutely know you need one.

[cmabooty]

Go with VMWare or Parallels (i prefer Parallels over the current VMWare). Office on the Mac sucks.

[Kevin R]

Go with VMWare or Parallels. Office on the Mac sucks.

Office 08 works perfectly well... and has support for those still using the Windozzze version of 03..

If he's going to be using SQL stuff I'd probably go the boot camp.. The only issue I have with Boot Camp is having to reboot anytime I need to use it, otherwise it works very, very well..

[dvenardos]

Sounds like he will be doing programming in which case he may need to use VBA which has much better support in the windows version. Someone will have to check but I believe there is an option in VMWare or Parallel that lets you use windows from a partition setup for use with boot camp. In that case he would be able to do either.

You should talk to one of the instructors or his advisor and ask him.

Office 08 works perfectly well... and has support for those still using the Windozzze version of 03..

If he's going to be using SQL stuff I'd probably go the boot camp.. The only issue I have with Boot Camp is having to reboot anytime I need to use it, otherwise it works very, very well..

[cmabooty]

Office 08 works perfectly well... and has support for those still using the Windozzze version of 03..

If he's going to be using SQL stuff I'd probably go the boot camp.. The only issue I have with Boot Camp is having to reboot anytime I need to use it, otherwise it works very, very well..

I beg to differ. If he's a business major, he'll be a heavy excel user. Excel on the Mac is severely crippled. No pivot charts? No solver? Macros don't work, etc. It's not fully compatible with files created in the windows version.

You can see a list of some of the problems here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microso...e_2008_for_Mac

This is why microsoft should NEVER be trusted with a standard. They can't even write to and read from their own format across platforms.

[Daryl RL]

Thanks for all the great advice everyone!

As it turns out, the textbooks for his basic computer class first semester involve SQL and VBA for Excel. Dual boot seems like the safest way to go.

[dvenardos]

I have done extensive Excel VBA programming. If he ever gets stuck and needs some help I be happy to do what I can.

[Karl_in_Chicago]

I beg to differ. If he's a business major, he'll be a heavy excel user. Excel on the Mac is severely crippled. No pivot charts? No solver? Macros don't work, etc. It's not fully compatible with files created in the windows version.

NeoCalc (part of NeoOffice) does pivot tables. Quite well.

[xr2]

I know that parallels can boot up the windows partition from bootcamp as a virtual machine. Going that route allows you to access something quick or boot into windows fully if you need it.

I have also run SQL Server this way before and can verify that it will work in this configuration.

I haven't tried this on my mac, but if you want to try a free virtual machine, you can try virtual box. You can get it here: http://www.virtualbox.org/