This issue is coming for me, as well. Although I currently have
personally no contemporary experience with running Windows on a Mac, a
colleague has done it, and he swears by VMware. He says the only time he
boots into Windows is to run a SQL Server for testing. (I mean running
the database server itself, not the client tools.) Apparently SQL Server
does not run under VMware. (He says even many games run under VMware.)
Of course, VMware has the advantage of not requiring you to boot into
Windows to run a Windows app. Another advantage is that VMware can run
from a virtual image anywhere you put it, so you could put your virtual
images on an external drive if you wanted. Finally, VMware can run your
Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine, too, which means you can have
your cake and eat it too. (Run all your same apps with the same settings
virtually or with a reboot as needed or desired.)
VMware has three modes: window, full-screen, and a mode that has a name
I don't remember something like "integrated". The integrated mode is
cool because your Windows apps all appear each in their own MacOS
windows. The Outlook email-arrival popups even appear on the Mac
desktop. Unfortunately this mode is not completely compatible with
multiple monitors, but this is the mode my colleague runs in. And you
should understand that he runs this way *at work* in a Windows
development shop.
I understand that Parallels also has most if not all the same
capabilities as VMware, but VMware is the one I've seen, and it seems
easy to set up. I've seen my colleage running as many as 3 different
virtual Windows machines at once on his MacBook Pro: his Boot Camp and 2
other virtual images (along with his Mac apps).
Knowing Darcy, he probably needs to run some heavy-duty sound processing
app that either can't tolerate the performance hit of running virtually
or else requires a level of access to the hardware that VMware doesn't
support. But for everyday Windows apps, including Office, Visual Studio,
and many other common apps, I think virtual is probably the way to go. Ymmv.
I agree with David Fenton that removing stuff from the base Windows
install will gain little disc space at the cost of much risk.
One other Boot Camp tip from my colleague: Boot Camp creates the Windows
partition as FAT32, which is extremely wasteful of space. When you
install Windows, DO NOT allow the Windows installer to repartition the
drive to NTFS. (Boot Camp cannot tolerate any other program partitioning
the drive.) Instead, elect to reformat the drive as NTFS (without
changing the partition) as part of the Windows install. If you haven't
done this, doing so could save you a lot of space in the long run, not
to mention providing much better performance and reliability.
FWIW: The first time around, my colleague allowed the Windows installer
to partition his drive and ended up losing all his data. Have care (and
have a backup).
If you elect to use VMware, install it after you have your Boot Camp up
and running. According to my colleague, it will automatically find your
Boot Camp partition when you install it.
--
Robert Patterson
http://RobertGPatterson.com
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