Purchasing advice needed: Bootcamp/Parallels on laptop

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
A friend of mine has asked me (as a Macizen) to guide her choice in a laptop for her son. The son does not game extensively (he's more your average IM/homework-only kid) but he DOES need to be able to run Windows so that he can watch Celtic TV, a streaming source for Scottish soccer that is currently only Windows-compatible. (It requires Win Media Player.



You can see the Celtic TV stats here: http://www.celticfc.net/channel67/faq.aspx



I don't use Bootcamp or Parallels, so I need your input. I'm asking you to please help me give her shopping advice. Which is better for this case, Bootcamp or Parallels? Will a MacBook be high-power enough to handle these needs? How much memory would you recommend?



Thanks for any advice you can give!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Leia1912 View Post


    A friend of mine has asked me (as a Macizen) to guide her choice in a laptop for her son. The son does not game extensively (he's more your average IM/homework-only kid) but he DOES need to be able to run Windows so that he can watch Celtic TV, a streaming source for Scottish soccer that is currently only Windows-compatible. (It requires Win Media Player.



    You can see the Celtic TV stats here: http://www.celticfc.net/channel67/faq.aspx



    I don't use Bootcamp or Parallels, so I need your input. I'm asking you to please help me give her shopping advice. Which is better for this case, Bootcamp or Parallels? Will a MacBook be high-power enough to handle these needs? How much memory would you recommend?



    Thanks for any advice you can give!



    Yes, a macbook should be fine. I currently run Windows Vista home premium on my mac mini (1.83Ghz Core Duo with a 1GB of RAM) via bootcamp and everything is very responsive. I can't really make an opinion on virtualization options such as Parallels or VMWare as I have never used them. I believe for your son's needs, virtualization would be more of the path to go. It's more convenient as you don't have to restart the machine to switch between operating systems.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    taskisstaskiss Posts: 1,212member
    How old is the kid?



    You need to enter the root password to fire up Parallels (as far as I can tell after using it for 1 week or so). If she doesn't want to share that, it becomes an issue.
  • Reply 3 of 10
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Leia1912 View Post


    A friend of mine has asked me (as a Macizen) to guide her choice in a laptop for her son. The son does not game extensively (he's more your average IM/homework-only kid) but he DOES need to be able to run Windows so that he can watch Celtic TV, a streaming source for Scottish soccer that is currently only Windows-compatible. (It requires Win Media Player.



    You can see the Celtic TV stats here: http://www.celticfc.net/channel67/faq.aspx



    I don't use Bootcamp or Parallels, so I need your input. I'm asking you to please help me give her shopping advice. Which is better for this case, Bootcamp or Parallels? Will a MacBook be high-power enough to handle these needs? How much memory would you recommend?



    Thanks for any advice you can give!



    You can run Parallels or VMWare, use Windows XP2Pro not Vista, Vista has really no benefits whatsoever if running next to MacOSX, virtualized.



    Try accessing the video feed using Videolan.org VLC player for MacOSX. You may find you don't need Windows at all.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    Have you tried installing the Flip4Mac plug-in? This allows you to play many Windows Media only formats right inside of Quicktime.



    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...omponents.mspx
  • Reply 5 of 10
    To answer an array of helpful thoughts (thank you so much for your input!)--



    The boy in question is 16. He has a 3-year old iBook currently. His mother is leaning toward taking the iBook for her own use (she covets it, anyway) and getting him a new laptop. I doubt she'd worry about him having root password access; the only concern I'd have with that is that he's your average computer-competent teenager, but I don't see him pulling off the higher-level tech stuff easily. If they are essentially equal programs, if Parallels requires a bit more tech saviness, I would lean then to Bootcamp.



    (The additional expense of Windows isn't a problem here, as she works for a university with a Microsoft licensing agreement and can get either XP or Vista Windows--legally!--for about $10.)



    Re: Flip4Mac and VLC. The CelticTV people are apparently into control and you have to log in and jump through all sorts of hoops to get their feed. If it were a straight feed without the authorization issues, I bet it would work through such programs/plugs-ins.
  • Reply 6 of 10
    Bootcamp ... the entire machine must boot into Windows... you can't run Windows AND Moc OSX at the same time.

    Parallels... runs in it's own window inside of OSX ... so you can run GarageBand (or any OSX app) and Windows at the same time ... drag and drop between OSX and Windows... etc.



    Windows runs SLIGHTLY slower under parallels (as it's not quite native), but for most uses, it's hardly noticeable.



    Bootcamp is free, Parallels is $80. BOTH require you to buy a copy of Windows. ($89 for XP).
  • Reply 7 of 10
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Leia1912 View Post


    To answer an array of helpful thoughts (thank you so much for your input!)--



    The boy in question is 16. He has a 3-year old iBook currently. His mother is leaning toward taking the iBook for her own use (she covets it, anyway) and getting him a new laptop. I doubt she'd worry about him having root password access; the only concern I'd have with that is that he's your average computer-competent teenager, but I don't see him pulling off the higher-level tech stuff easily. If they are essentially equal programs, if Parallels requires a bit more tech saviness, I would lean then to Bootcamp.



    (The additional expense of Windows isn't a problem here, as she works for a university with a Microsoft licensing agreement and can get either XP or Vista Windows--legally!--for about $10.)



    Re: Flip4Mac and VLC. The CelticTV people are apparently into control and you have to log in and jump through all sorts of hoops to get their feed. If it were a straight feed without the authorization issues, I bet it would work through such programs/plugs-ins.



    Download the trial version of BOTH Parallels and VMWare Fusion. You have a few weeks to try it out. See which works best, after a while you will probably like one or the other or both.



    Bootcamp is a very high success fallback option. But if you can do Parallels or VMware Fusion, I think you will very likely NOT want to use Bootcamp. Parallels or VMWare Fusion is very, very easy to use, and I would say much much less complicated than all the partitioning stuff with Bootcamp.
  • Reply 8 of 10
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    I bought Parallels for my MacBook Pro and it works ok I guess, I haven't used it that much - actually not at all, except to show my PC friends how cool Macs are. My question is, now that Fusion is out, is it any better and are there any reasons to consider switching to Fusion? It is easy to switch, re-activate Vista etc.?



    I've read somewhere that Vista Home premium was not license-able for virtual machines but I didn't learn about it until after I installed it in Parallels.



    m
  • Reply 9 of 10
    If running XP Pro on Parallels, would converting AVI file to DVD format take longer than doing the same operation while running Bootcamp? I suppose I'm asking about the processor speed/use. Would it be software specific?
  • Reply 10 of 10
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by polvadis View Post


    If running XP Pro on Parallels, would converting AVI file to DVD format take longer than doing the same operation while running Bootcamp? I suppose I'm asking about the processor speed/use. Would it be software specific?



    Depending on whether the program is multithreaded. If so, VMWare Fusion would bring about similar speeds to Bootcamp. Because VMWare Fusion supports dual processors or more, whereas Parallels doesn't, currently as far as I know.
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