This weekend, I conducted a little experiment. I
used Boot Camp to boot my 17-inch 1.83GHz iMac Core Duo with 2GBs of RAM and an external 24-inch monitor in Windows XP
and then I forced myself to remain in XP. I didn't reboot into OS X. Instead, I explored the Windows performance on the
machine. Overall, I have to admit, it was a positive experience. I still prefer OS X, but I can now see the advantages
to booting into XP from time to time. One odd thing that I wasn't expecting was that I didn't find myself loathing Windows quite as much. Something about running it quickly on my nice iMac made it more pleasant than all of my previous experiences running XP on various PC boxes. It's still the fastest I've ever seen Windows perform. Half of this is probably that I didn't load it down with lots of crap programs, and I had it properly protected immediately after install with virus, firewall, and spyware protection.
There were negative aspects to the experience. It hard crashed at least 5 times on me this weekend. This mostly happened when I was installing something...
More after the jump...
Skype didn't install the first time I tried. One time, however, it crashed on startup as Gizmo Project was loading. Disabling Gizmo Project load on start up fixed the problem.
I managed to get Firefox running nicely, Gaim installed for chat, and Open Office installed, so that I more or less had all the work environment necessities. Also, several of the Windows only programs and services that I have to access for work (and for which I keep a Dell laptop lying around) installed easily on the iMac running XP, so I no longer have to leave my iMac and use the Dell to get my work done. That's the landslide benefit of Boot Camp right there.
However, the coolest part, and the thing that will keep me booting into XP more often than I normally would, is the games. Saturday, I ran out to the store and bought Guild Wars, The Battle for Middle Earth, and Halo. They all run very fast and nicely on the iMac XP. The only slow down I experienced was when battling the very cinematic and fire-breathing Balrog while playing The Battle For Middle Earth, running it fullscreen 1600x1200 with the high detail settings on the external 24-inch monitor. After I dropped down the settings a bit, it played fine and I imagine that if I were running it on the iMac's default screen there wouldn't have been any issue.
Also a slight note, running two monitors off of the iMac in XP did create a few visual "burps" every once in a while, where both screens would flicker slightly. This usually only occured when I wasn't actively doing anything on the machine. As if the screensaver was thinking about kicking in, but decided not to.
Also, since Flip4Mac isn't currently installing on my Intel Mac, if I need to view Windows Media Player content on my Mac, rebooting into Windows seems to be the only way to do so.
So what's my end verdict: if you've been keeping a crappy Windows machine around, get rid of it. Get a copy of XP and install it on your Intel Mac. Get it for the workday bits that you are forced to use Windows for and keep it for the games.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-10-2006 @ 2:10PM
andy said...
correct me if im wrong but isnt Halo available for the mac? so if everyone does this then games production will stop for the mac, ya can keep ya windows far far away from me.
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4-10-2006 @ 2:18PM
Jeremy said...
I have Flip4Mac installed and for the longest time I couldn't access WMP content on the web. I discovered this was because F4M installs an internet plugin across all your browsers that preempts WMP, even though it's unable to play the content. If you delete the F4M plugin from your Internet Plugins folder you'll have no problem watching most WMP content on the web, and one less reason to have to reboot into XP.
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4-10-2006 @ 2:22PM
Silver said...
"One odd thing that I wasn't expecting was that I didn't find myself loathing Windows quite as much."
Give it time. Soon enough you will be loathing it as much as those of us who have to use Windows for our full-time jobs do (I call it my weekly 40 hours of Hell).
The only pity is you have to see Windows at all before playing games. I'd like to see a Windows boot screen that shows nothing but a list of games to play. Why dip your feet in the rest of that cesspool if you don't have to? :)
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4-10-2006 @ 2:22PM
Joshua said...
Great article! Can you download that MacTel Windows virtualization software and report on that?
I would agree; on a faster computer, Windows doesn't suck nearly as bad.
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4-10-2006 @ 2:27PM
C.K. Sample, III said...
Jeremy, thanks for the tip! That's great!
andy, Halo is available for Mac, *but* it's cheaper for the PC, since it's been out on that platform longer. Also, neither of the other two games I bought are available for the Mac. There's a lot of games out there that we never see ported to Mac. I actually think that doing this will encourage developers to develop for the Mac. If they see us spending dollars on PC titles, they'll realize they can entice more dollars out of us by making versions that are native and don't require this reboot.
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4-10-2006 @ 2:30PM
Will said...
I wasn't planning to buy another Mac until the new desktops came out, so I could at least decide between a MBP, and desktop intel Mac. Boot Camp has me fighting to keep from ordering an MBP from Apple. I am really impressed with this considering it seems to work very well and it's still only a Beta release.
Damn you Apple, why must you suck me in again?
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4-10-2006 @ 2:35PM
GenesysX said...
Nice article!
It would be great to see you do the same with Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta2 for Mac OS X , as this would not require a reboot.
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4-10-2006 @ 2:37PM
Adrian said...
I've been running Windows for a couple of years exclusively after switching over from an old G3 mac. I must say that my experiences with Windows have been quite good, especialle in contrast to what some Mac-fans make it to be. I can't remember when my PC last hard-crashed and I get crashes only very seldomly. I don't know what some people do to their Windows installation but mine is very stable. Sure, there are some quirks but I had those with OSX likewise.
I do prefer OSX though and that's why I bought a PowerBook and now a new shiny MacBook Pro. OSX is better to use but mostly because of those many creative minds writing amazing little applications for it (you just don't find as many catchy little apps for windows).
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4-10-2006 @ 2:50PM
g4e said...
Watch this: http://www.mustseeblog.com/?p=73
Brilliant Apple commercial mod. Watch it till the end!
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4-10-2006 @ 2:58PM
David Watson said...
"There's a lot of games out there that we never see ported to Mac. I actually think that doing this will encourage developers to develop for the Mac. If they see us spending dollars on PC titles, they'll realize they can entice more dollars out of us by making versions that are native and don't require this reboot."
How exactly? The developers don't know that it's being played on an Intel Mac booted into XP. I wish that developers *did* port more games to the Mac but they don't. So, if you game and you want access to all those titles, and you love using your Mac, it's a great new option.
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4-10-2006 @ 3:13PM
Jonathan said...
I've used both Boot Camp and Parallels (virtualization), so I can give you the quick comparison based on my experience (iMac 2.0GhZ 1g RAM). I actually JUST wanted to use boot camp, but I needed a Win XP SP2 CD (I own WinXP, but not a WinXP SP2 CD) and I thought I could use Parallels to create a slipstream disk. So here you have it, the difference between Boot Camp and Parallels:
1. Boot Camp is faster. Yes, it is noticeable. Now, I'm not saying Parallels is slow, but you can tell that it is not full speed.
2. Parallels doesn't support full screen. You'll have to run Windows in... well, a window.
3. Drivers are missing. You *may* be able to fix this by using Apple's Drivers CD, but I didn't try. Specifically I noticed that sound and CD/DVD burning was not yet supported.
4. Parallels caused a kernel panic on my machine during the WinXP install process. It was an isolated incident and I'm not sure what triggered the panic.
5. RAM - you'll need a lot of it. For good reason, you are running a second OS. So, think about it, whatever you allocate to Parallels (you do get to choose) won't be accessible to Mac OS.
In short, if you want the 'full Windows XP experience' OR you want to play games, go with Boot Camp. If you just want to launch an office (Visio, Access, etc) or work-specific app, Parallels will work very nicely for you. Keep in mind that Parallels IS in beta, so some of things I mentioned above won't apply once it is final (driver issues, full screen, etc) - but ask yourself... by the time this is final, should I just wait for 10.5?
In the end I had to get a copy of WinXP SP2 from a PC-using friend (who kindly labeled it 'an unholy amount of porn') since Parallels didn't support CD burning.
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4-10-2006 @ 3:14PM
Farhan said...
I did the same this weekend. I installed FarCry and MOH:Pacific Assault and ran them at highest settings on my iMac 20" Core Duo. The games played smoothly.
Aside from and ugly UI and misrable user expercience in Windows. What I really don't understand is that the games I installed, FarCry and MOH, were on 5 and 4 disks respectively. WTF! Haven't the games developers on Windows know of a thing called DVD? This is just unexceptable and I don't see why so many of the gamers out there put up with this crap.
And secondly, the fucking install times on these games are tremendous. Again WTF!
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4-10-2006 @ 3:15PM
Jason Lee said...
CK,
Ever used VLC? It plays Windows Media, but not the newest DRM'd stuff. Also, you can get the Microsoft Windws Media Player for Mac and just run it from the DMG when need be!
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4-10-2006 @ 3:20PM
Weili said...
Haha, I agree with Silver that it would be nice if we can boot into Windows and just see a list of games instead of messing around with the Windows UI. :)
Everyone's experience with Windows is different, just as theirs with Mac OS X. Some people are simply more... "techno-savvy" while others aren't. I use Virtual PC on and off mostly for my work and it's been running OK, it doesn't necessarily crash significantly more or less than OS X, that's because I apply the same principles in using Windows XP as I do with OS X, namely keep it updated, maintain it frequently, and don't install stupid crap.
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4-10-2006 @ 3:40PM
Lagomorpho said...
"One odd thing that I wasn't expecting was that I didn't find myself loathing Windows quite as much."
I've been working on both platforms simultaneously for the past 6 years. Eventually I realized for the most part that the two OSes are pretty much the same. I like to think that OSX and WinXP are like two women of different races. They each have characteristics the other doesn't but in the end, saying one is better than the other is just not a valid statement.
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4-10-2006 @ 3:41PM
Jens said...
Hi!
Has anyone of you tried if you can install xp on an external firewire-drive? I don't like the idea of taking away 15 or 20 gigs from my 80 GB-MBP-HD. So even if I need to install XP itself on the internal drive, can I adequately run programs (i.e. games ;) ) from an external drive or will the throughput be too low?
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4-10-2006 @ 3:50PM
Jeff said...
I personally cannot suvive without Expose. At work (I work at a webhost/design firm) when I have dozens of shells and windows open, it takes a while for me to figure find the window that I need to switch to. Oh, spotlight/Quicksilver save me a lot of time too.
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4-10-2006 @ 4:22PM
Steve said...
It sounds so silly when I hear people say things like "Why dip your feet in the rest of that cesspool if you don't have to?". It's really like Pat Robertson - one person giving a whole group of people a bad rap.
Each platform has it's advantages. OS X is nicer looking, has more advanced and modern features, and is built on a more stable and secure base. Windows has more apps, better gaming support, and wider acceptance.
Trashing XP does not help Apple, and makes Mac users look insecure. Run a positive campaign!
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4-10-2006 @ 5:04PM
Kasumi-Astra said...
I'm a strong advocate of native games on OS X, but I'm an even stronger advocate of value-for-money games. I can't afford and therefore cannot support paying £40 for a game that is getting close to two years old (well, I do regularly with my Sega Saturn, but that's a different story). If Macintosh games do not get competitive then they face being consigned to history.
My most respected example is World of Warcraft. The Macintosh WoW player base is quite sizable and is growing all the time. There is only one version of the game that installs to PC and PowerPC and Intel Macintoshes. This has meant true value for money and up-to-date gameplay for Macintosh gamers.
However, with most other games I'm faced with the full launch price for a game that has been around for years on PCs. I'm absolutely thrilled with the opportunity to play all the latest games, but at the same time I've got a very bad feeling about gaming on the Macintosh platform. Overall, gaming on the Mac is a better experience when the game is converted well, but games aren't going to be ported for the convenience of Mac users not having to dual-boot...
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4-10-2006 @ 5:40PM
Silver said...
"Trashing XP does not help Apple, and makes Mac users look insecure."
Possibly, Steve. But some of us really do have to use Windows all the time, and some of us really do think it's garbage when compared directly to OS X. And we can objectively say so, having plenty of exposure to each.
There's no insecurity in my dislike of Windows. Resentment yes, but no insecurity.
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