VM ware, parallels and bootcamp

[otispunkmeyer]

so, i have tried all 3 and ran into headaches...usually centered around windows activation since XP thinks that they are all seperate, different computers.

so to do away with that i need to pick one.

i put bootcamp there because i thought id like to try a couple of games out on my SR MBP, but really i havent used it so the only other reason to have bootcamp is incase i need to run programs like solid edge, unigraphics, matlab.

booting to windows is a bit of a chore though and booting a VM from the bootcamp partition is slow, so i would like to stick with one of the virtual machines exclusively.

i have purchased parallels but i only have the latest 2.x build, not 3.0
i have trial/demo/RC1 or whatever of VM ware and i find that apart from dual core support they are both the same.

what i wanna know is, which one, if any.... will allow me to run a CAD package like NX3/4?
im gonna have to pay for one of them arent i? either buy VMware (and sell parallels) or pay the $ to upgrade to parallels 3.0

will parallels 3.0 have dual cpu support? though i dont think it matters too much, the programs i have ran just fine on my old single core pc.

also, how do i get rid of a bootcamp partition? and will the space i made for it just go back to being part of my mac hard drive?

 

[TheStu]

You can use BootCamp to get rid of the Windows Partition. It might not want to go, so you may have to backup and reformat your drive (it sucks, I know)

I suggest you get the trial versions of both Parallels and VMWare to see what works better. I personally prefer VMWare, but i cannot tell you with certainty that it would work better for CAD.

 

[Kaido]

Parallels can boot from the Boot Camp partition, fyi.

 

[TheStu]

booting to windows is a bit of a chore though and booting a VM from the bootcamp partition is slow, so i would like to stick with one of the virtual machines exclusively.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: TheStu

booting to windows is a bit of a chore though and booting a VM from the bootcamp partition is slow, so i would like to stick with one of the virtual machines exclusively.

Ha completely missed that line, thanks!

 

[otispunkmeyer]

well i installed XP via parallels last night, suprisingly using bootcamp to remove the windows partition and merge that 20gb back into the mac partition was super straight forward. just to check i checked what space i had left

149Gb capacity ish - its a 160gig drive, so i expect it to be around here when you take into account that a gig is 1024 and not 1000 and im assuming theres some space in a secret partition incase things go completely tits up and that the formatting has also reduced the size a little

49gig used ish
99gig free ish.

so i guess it worked. if it hadnt i would of expected it to say

149
49
79

so id have like a missing 20g's somewhere.

i couldnt find my XP SP2 disc, so i had to break out my genuine XP SP1 disc, oh the fun i had, while trying to use CS2 at the same time as installing windows i got all sorts of errors and on the first run, it told me it couldnt find IEXPLORER.EX_ so when i eventually got into windows i had no IE and no Internet connection settings so i couldnt even use opera to get to windows update! 2nd time through i got another obscure error and for some reason went through the XP install/setup twice on its own accord, but its actually working now.

gah, im glad i dropped windows.....seems like every time i use it it either breaks or makes life somewhat difficult.

heh i love how Parallels an VM fusion are almost identical.... parallel tools vs Vmware tools, same little icons in the taskbar, unity vs coherence. bah its all the same!

im going to see which it cheaper, i have a feeling its probably going to be cheaper for me to upgrade to Parallels 3.0 rather than purchase VMware Fusion then try to sell parallels 2.0

VMware is $80 because im not in the US i cant use the rebate. thats £40 for me
Parallels 3 upgrade is 40.26 EUR, about £27 for me

so its nearly half the price.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

oh hang on

149gig is right

160 x 10^9 bytes / (1024^3) = 149.011 GB of actual space (well same size since the definition of a megabyte in proper base 2 is 1048576bytes)

 

[TheStu]

If you already have Parallels, and it works well for you, then by all means keep using it. I think I mentioned earlier that I prefer VMWare simply because it has always seemed to run more smoothly on my system than Parallels ever did.... well, the very first VMWare beta was pretty bad on my system, but every version since has been topnotch.

 

[Cadop]

Does anyone know how to update the video driver in Parallels 3.0 to something other than the default parallels driver? I'm trying to get Team Fortress 2 to work but haven't had any luck yet.

 

[alfa147x]

god XP is deadly slow on my MB under VM

 

[Parasitic]

I still couldn't figure out why Parallels would crash once a while upon startup and to get it to run I'd have to restart Leopard.
Hope they fix it soon...gets really annoying.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Parasitic
I still couldn't figure out why Parallels would crash once a while upon startup and to get it to run I'd have to restart Leopard.
Hope they fix it soon...gets really annoying.

I'm having lots of issues with Parallels 3.0 under Leopard too. I'm going to give VMware a shot.

 

[Kaido]

I've been using VMware and it's the bomb. I'm switching...er, again.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: Kaido
I've been using VMware and it's the bomb. I'm switching...er, again.

Took you long enough!

I downloaded the new Parallels Desktop build the other day, but I'm not sure why...