Macworld: Running Vista Home on a Mac

Macworld has a hands on with Microsoft Windows Vista Home, loading it up under Parallels Desktop and Apple’s Boot Camp. They were able to install it under Parallels.

Excerpt:

If you care about running Windows on a Mac, you’ve undoubtedly heard that the end user license agreement (EULA) for Windows Vista Home Basic and Home Premium forbids you to use these versions of Microsoft’s latest operating system release with virtualization software—software that allows you to run operating systems other than the Mac OS in a windowed environment within the Mac OS. Such virtualization software includes the popular Parallels Desktop for Mac. What the reports on this matter don’t reveal is whether this is simply a legal restriction or also a technical one….
Cutting briefly to the chase, Vista Home Premium installed perfectly well. Once it was up and running I noticed that the Aero effect was nowhere to be seen—Parallels simply couldn’t emulate the kind of graphic card/power necessary to make it work. I then asked Vista to install the latest Vista updates—something I understood to be a problem for others who tried it.

Vista Home Premium running on a Mac via the latest Parallels Desktop beta

No problem. Vista downloaded the updates, installed them, I restarted, and everything continued to work.

New EFI Firmware May Fix Parallels/VTI-x Issues (Nov 13, 2006)

Some are reporting on the Parallels forums and elsewhere, that they are no longer having to do the “sleep trick” to get the Intel virtualization technology (VTI-x) to kick in for Parallels. You have to install the update and then power the machine all the way off – rebooting wont’ necessarily make it work properly.

Updated Firmware:
- Mac Pro Update
- iMac Update
- MacBook Pro Update
- Mac mini Update
- MacBook Update

All of these updates do the following:

Fixes several Boot Camp, start up, and wake-from-sleep issues (except for the Mac Pros).

Also: Firmware Restoration CD v1.2

Boot Camp 1.1.2 beta Released

There’s a new update to Boot Camp.

Updates/Changes:

Boot Camp 1.1.2 beta contains several updates and is intended for all new and previous Boot Camp beta users.

* The Apple USB Modem now works correctly
* Trackpad scrolling and right-click gestures work correctly
* Fixed idle sleep bugs
* Reduced dialogs during Windows driver installation
* Improved international support
* Improved 802.11 wireless networking support

If you previously installed Boot Camp beta, you can easily update to Boot Camp 1.1.2 beta. You don’t need to partition your hard drive again (unless you want to change its size) or reinstall your Macintosh and Windows software or documents, but it’s very important to update the Boot Camp Assistant software, create a new Macintosh Drivers for Windows CD and install the updated software it contains on Windows XP. Complete instructions are provided in the Installation and Setup Guide included with the Boot Camp 1.1.2 beta software.

Macworld UK Article: CrossOver lets Windows apps run on OS X, sans Windows

Macworld UK has an excellent write-up about CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac, and how it relates to Parallels Desktop and Apple’s Boot Camp.

CodeWeavers has announced plans to release CrossOver Mac this summer. The $60 software will allow Intel Mac users to run Windows applications – including some games – without having to buy or install Windows itself.

Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop both provide this capability for Intel Mac owners already. Boot Camp, software from Apple currently available in beta form, makes users reboot their Macs and run Windows. Parallels Desktop iis a ‘virtualisation’ utility that enables the Windows operating system and Windows applications to run in Mac OS X, within another window (or, alternately, in full screen mode).

CrossOver Mac will take this one step further – it eschews what CodeWeavers chief operating officer Jon Parshall calls the “box within a box approach”.

“What you see running is an application sitting in your Dock or your Applications folder,” Parshall said.

Both Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop work because the new Macs utilise the same microprocessor that’s found in Windows-compatible computer, and CrossOver Mac employs the same basic principle. This wasn’t possible before January, when Macs depended solely on PowerPC-based microprocessors made by IBM and Freescale. The presence of an Intel processor inside the Mac forges a close enough resemblance to get Windows and Windows applications to work.

Full article.

Macworld Review: Parallels Desktop for Mac

Macworld has published a review of Parallels Desktop for Mac, including benchmarking it using applications (including Photoshop) both within a Windows Virtual Machine, as well as using Apple’s Boot Camp with Windows, and running natively under Windows on various name-brand PCs (Dell, HP, etc.). They bring up what everybody else is saying, that you’ll need lots of RAM to run virtualization software.

Quote:

Parallels’ ability to run nearly every version of Windows, along with many versions of Unix and Linux, makes it a valuable tool for anyone using an Intel-based Mac who has a need or desire to work with other operating systems. If your job requires Windows, but you love your Mac and OS X, Parallels will truly give you the best of both worlds. If you put your Parallels session in full screen mode, anyone walking by won’t even be able to tell that under the Windows façade, you’re actually running the world’s greatest operating system.