Boot Camp is big news. It is virtually all the Mac community is talking about right now.
I set up Windows XP on a 10Gb partition of my MacBook Pro yesterday. And it works a treat. A typical Apple software solution, actually – well thought out, comprehensive and easy to use. But I doubt I will use it much, maybe for the odd game but nothing more than that.
But why is that? Am I an ardent Applehead who can’t stand XP and it Fisher-Price colour scheme? Am I paranoid that Windows worms will invade my Mac and eat my data? Or do I just not need to run Windows software?
Well, none of those things. In fact, I really need Windows in my life. My MacBook Pro has replaced the Dell laptop my employer supplied me with to do my job, and I have pretty well solved most of the problems running Mac OS X in a Windows workplace presented me. But not all of them – thanks to one supplier in particular.
You see, my company uses a Check Point firewall. That means you need a Check Point client for VPN access when out of the office. And the Mac client that Check Point developed has not been updated for two years, and won’t run on anything later than 10.3 Panther. Which is completely pathetic.
So, while I have Lotus Notes running very well under Rosetta, I can’t remotely access my email when out of the office. The Citrix client (which also works very well under Rosetta) allows me to access a PC server session and get my mail that way, but I still have no offline access.
To address this, I have tried using emulation, both Q and WinTel. But because they are emulators, they are slow, and buggy. In fact, on each of them, the Windows VPN client failed to install with a ‘catastrophic error’!
Boot Camp solves that problem – except that I have become accustomed to using OS X for work now, and it will really suck to have to go back to XP fulltime. Especially as I love the enhanced productivity I have found under OS X in the work environment.
But the day after Boot Camp was released, Parallels released a Beta of their Workstation product, which gives a Virtual Intel machine in a window on OS X.
This is no emulator – it effectively partitions the entire computer into multiple environments. Everything on the MacBook Pro is offered to the environment in the window with only a slight overhead.
And it works EXTREMELY well. I installed Windows 2000, Service Pack 4, Lotus Notes and the Windows Check Point VPN client, and had the whole thing done and my mail synchronised in an hour. Performance for office apps is exceptional – there are a few video niggles, so gamers will still want to look to Boot Camp, but for anything else there is no need to reboot.
I was so impressed that I have already pre-ordered a copy for when it is released. This really is competition for Virtual PC or VMWare. It will be only $50 on release, the Beta is currently free, and it will support any OS that can run on an Intel machine – Linux, Windows 9x, Windows 2000 or XP. I must try and get a Vista beta running in there as well.
The OS X desktop funtions perfectly well while the Windows window is running – a true multi-tasking environment.
I now have the work PC I always wanted – a Mac, but with no software or hardware compromises for those few legacy Windows apps.
My recommendation? Anyone with an Intel Mac who isn’t already all Apple SHOULD BE RUNNING this software. It has already precipitated two of my colleagues to go shopping at the Apple store…
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