Archive for boot-camp tag
Boot Camp 2.1, VMware Fusion 1.1.2 and MacBook Pro firmware
Boot Camp 2.1
Apple have released Boot Camp 2.1 which finally includes official 64-bit support on Vista and support for Windows XP Service Pack 3.
This update may mean that 3D games will play without locking up or installing NVidia’s own drivers and that the trackpad functions correctly again (broken since Boot Camp 1.x)
MacBook Pro Firmware 1.5.1
Apple’s MacBook Pro Firmware Update 1.5.1 applies to all recent MacBook Pro’s including the ones with MBP31.0070.B05 firmware that the 1.5 update failed to upgrade leaving 17″ owners on MBP31.0070.B07.
The new firmware does not fix a problem where trackpad input would become jerky after suspending/sleeping and turning Airport off would make matters worse. 10.5.3 has fixes for Airport after sleeping which might solve the issue…
VMware Fusion 1.1.2
VMware Fusion 1.1.2 is just out and includes a host of fixes and improvements including:
- Windows XP Service Pack 3
- Network and USB compatibility
- Time Machine compatibility
Now that VMware lets Time Machine backup the VM image file and that Time Machine backs up modified files in their entirety you might want to exclude ~/Documents/Virtual Machines it unless you fancy loosing several gigabytes per hour whilst using a VM. Of course if you have your VM running off it’s own partition to allow Boot Camp too then that’s not an issue.
With any luck VMware will figure out a way of Time Machine backing up changed individual files within the Windows filesystem…
[)amien
Windows Experience Index on MacBook Pro 2GHz compared
I just got the opportunity to try out the latest version of VMware and thought I’d do a quick Windows Experience Index on Boot Camp, Parallels and VMware to see what the performance is like before my new MacBook Pro 17″ arrives (hopefully on Friday!)
When I installed Leopard on my machine I took the opportunity to carve out a dedicated 20GB partition again to put a fresh install of Vista on. As well as being able to boot natively this also now means I can run my single Windows partition switching between native, Parallels or VMware at will which admittedly drives Windows Activation crazy.
Host machine
| Hardware | MacBook Pro 2GHz “MacBookPro1,1″ |
|---|---|
| Memory | 2048MB DDR2 667MHz |
| Processor | 2.0GHz Core Duo |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon X1600 256MB |
| Disk | 100GB 5400RPM |
| Operating system | Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1 |
Configuration
| Memory | 848MB (Virtual machines only) |
|---|---|
| Disk | 20GB Boot Camp partition |
| Operating system | Microsoft Vista Ultimate Edition 32-bit |
Testing notes
- No other applications running in OS X or Vista
- Full-screen mode
- Vendors guest OS tools & drivers installed
Scores
| VMware 1.1 62573 |
Parallels 3.0 5570 beta |
Boot Camp 2.0 drivers |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4.7 |
| Memory (RAM) | 3.9 | 3.9 | 4.9 |
| Graphics | 1.9 | 1.9 | 4.1 |
| Gaming graphics | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4.4 |
| Primary hard disk | 5.9 | 5.9 | 5.9 |
| Overall | 1.0 | 1.0 | 4.1 |
Thoughts
Processor: A little surprising given that VMware supports multiple cores but that Parallels doesn’t.
Memory: To be expected given that the VM was only running with less RAM.
Graphics: Disappointing and likely caused by the VM vendors graphics drivers not being WDM which based.
Gaming graphics: Very disappointing and caused by lack of DirectX 9 graphics support.
Hard disk: Like processor this is a pleasant surprise.
After my new 17″ MacBook Pro arrives (hopefully this Friday) I will produce another set of scores which should show how much faster the 2.6GHz is with all the options and let me compare like-for-like on the memory front.
I also want to run some Visual Studio 2008 build time comparisons (probably of SubSonic) because compilations are what really counts ;-) If you have any further suggestions for benchmarks, leave a comment!
[)amien
Apple’s Boot Camp beyond the expiry date
Stories about Apple’s Boot Camp and the looming expiration of the 1.x beta versions to coincide with the release of Mac OS X Leopard and Boot Camp 2.0 are abound.
To clarify there are a number of pieces of software which make running Windows on a Macintosh, they are:
- EFI firmware update with legacy BIOS support
- Boot Camp Assistant (partitioning tool)
- Apple’s Windows drivers (iSight, touch pad, Apple Remote etc.)
- Apple’s Windows software (Software Update)
- Third-party drivers (Intel, ATI, NVidia, RealTek etc.)
The licence to use Boot Camp will apparently expire when Leopard is released however the Boot Camp Assistant will expire 1st January 2008. To repartition your disk after this date simply set your clock back to any time during 2007 then launch the Boot Camp Assistant. I have tested this and it works just fine, just remember to set your clock back afterward ;-)
Other components are unlikely to expire as:
- the EFI firmware update was never part of the Boot Camp package but a separate prerequisite
- the third-party drivers are available directly from the vendors
The only real question is whether the Apple-provided drivers and software for Windows will continue to function. I believe they are unlikely to expire and if they do it only covers non-essential functionality like the keyboard back light, iSight driver, Apple Remote etc. many of which were not even present in earlier versions of Boot Camp. The touch pad functions as a standard input device (albeit in a more basic mode) without Apple’s drivers.
As Douglas would say Don’t Panic.
[)amien
Parallels Desktop 3036 beta build out
Parallels have released a beta build of their excellent virtual machine for the Mac and it’s loaded with cool new features. Once out of beta it will be a free upgrade to existing owners.
The feature list runs something like this:
- Drag & drop files between Finder & Explorer for copying
- Boot from the Boot Camp partition (will require another activation and you loose suspend VM)
- Read/Write to the Boot Camp partition (NTFS or FAT)
- Use Mac clipboard cut/copy/paste short cuts in Windows (opt XCV)
- Graphics performance increases of up to 50%
- Windows auto resizes to Mac window size (about time)
- Coherence mode puts Windows application on the Mac desktop & DockBar instead of in the VM window
- Transporter lets you convert VMware and VirtualPC images to Parallels Desktop
- UI has been revised & polished throughout to be more Mac-like
It’s not all perfect though – some people have been reporting problems with Mac Pro systems and video driver support so waiting for a few days might be a good idea but it’s great progress.
Microsoft have a number of VirtualPC images available including the Visual Studio Orcas preview and the Internet Explorer 6 test platform. With Transporter you should just be able to convert them and get going although I would imagine the copy of XP will baulk and require re-activation :(
Now we just need virtualised multi-processors, 64-bit support and hardware accelerated 3D ;-)
Parallels has gained support for hardware accelerated 3D and VMware support for multiple cores/processors since this post was published.
[)amien
Switching from Boot Camp to Parallels
A few weeks ago I managed to screw up my Windows XP installation on my MacBook using some low-level tools and driver related stuff.
I’d already run out of space on the 30GB partition I’d allocated, I was missing the OS X side and not running any 3D applications so I took the plunge to remove the partition entirely and switch over to using the Parallels VM product I’d purchase instead.
Installation was a breeze and I soon had a clean XP install with Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, .NET Reflector, IE7 and a bunch of other useful tools for work operational again.
Whilst the speed isn’t as nippy as the raw Boot Camp option was it’s fast enough – certainly faster than the Pentium 4 box my client provided for development although having 2GB of RAM certainly helps.
With XP just running the dev tools this meant I could access my iTunes library on OS X whilst I work and get back to using Colloquay and Adium.
Safari crashes every time I try to blog post even though it doesn’t even try to support HTML editing abilities so Firefox and Camino are my staple on the Mac side.
I use a dual-monitor configuration during the day and Parallels works like a breeze with OS X on one display and Windows on the other. The mouse just glides between the two seamlessly – no clicking in/out or awkward keys to press to jump between the two although Parallels did need to be manually told what the resolution was.
It seems I’m not alone in choosing this set-up.
All Parallels need to do now is to enable the virtual machine to utilise multiple cores and 3D acceleration and it would be perfect.
Well, switching over to a Core 2 powered MacBook Pro with 4-8GB of RAM might be perfection… and a bigger hard-disk…
[)amien