Any guides or resources for running Windows under VMWare on OS X

Question

I'm considering purchasing a PowerMac so that I can geek out on OSX, Windows and Linux, simultaneously on the same hardware.

But the fiscal responsibility part of me demands some due diligence before committing the money.

Are there any guides or other resources (web pages, blogs) relating to this?

I need to be able to run Visual Studio in the virtualized Windows, and obviously with sufficient performance.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The actual "PowerMac" was a PPC computer and is not capable or running Windows.

The new Mac Pro (or any new mac), however, has an x86 chipset and can run Windows either through Apple's built in Bootcamp, or through something like VMWare Fusion.

See here for some tips on doing so.

Answer 2

I use VirtualBox on my MacBook and it's fine. Windows 7 performance is OK IMO, but I don't actually use it besides some testing.

Answer 3

From my experience with my current generation macbook,

PowerMac's are essentially out of the question for decent performance Visual Studio work.

The Intel-based Mac's however work very well. I would recommend boot-camp over VMWare for your Visual Studio work, but it's pretty easy to dualboot.

VMWare and/or Parellels both work well for standard window's tasks, but Visual Studio is a hog in every meaning of the word, and would benefit from the standalone windows install.

Answer 4

Buy the smallest Mac fulfilling your needs. A used Macbook having Core 2 Duo processor should go to 4 Gb of ram which you then upgrade it to.

Then vmware fusion and you are running.

Thats what I do - it works VERY well for me.

Answer 5

VirtualBox from Sun is free. I've used it alongside Parallels, because booting Parallels from my BootCamp partition was slower than just opening VirtualBox.

Either works fine, but if you really need to boot directly into Windows stick with VMWare or Parallels for now. If running in virtual mode is fine for your needs, try VirtualBox before dropping any cash on the other two programs.

Answer 6

I use VMware Fusion for my virtualization needs, but Boot Camp is helpful for applications that are more resource intensive or require direct access to the hardware (graphically intensive applications, such as games, although the latest version of Fusion supports DirectX 9 Shader 2.0. I have not tried this myself, but I hear the frame rates are acceptable. DirectX 9.0 support is helpful as this should allow for Win Server 2008/R2/Win 7 to use the Aero theme)

The nice thing about Boot Camp is that your current Leopard DVD includes all the drivers for your Mac's hardware. So the process is:

1. Run Boot Camp Assistant from the Utilites app folder.
2. Partition the drive.
3. Reboot with Win install disk and complete Win installation.
4. Insert Leopard DVD and the driver utility should autorun.

VMware pulls this all together by letting you boot the Boot Camp partition in a VM in Mac OS X. This means you can perform maintenance work on your VM (patches, installs, etc.), while still getting things done in Mac OS X.

Answer 7

With the new V3 of VMWare Fusion I no longer have any hesitation recommending the combination of a relatively new Mac of any kind + VMWare Fusion as a really reliable Windows machine. I would consider maxing out the memory on the machine for all but the lightest workload. If you might be creating more than a few virtual machines put as much HD space into the machine as you can afford.