Windows XP on a Mac Book

[Knight]

Yep the title says it all. My brother is looking at laptops and was curious about apple and XP Pro on the new Mac Book. I did not know the answer, so I am looking for one.

On a side note I heard that there is a hack now to install Windows on a Mac. How true is that? Thank you for reading this and any advise you might give me. :)

[Knight]

I have one more thing to add. My brother wants to have the compatibility to run all the applications that he needs for school. If I am wrong with the assumption that a Mac would not be compatible, please let me know.

[Vapor]

Well, XP and Vista can be installed on the Mac Book courtesy of Apple themselves :) No hack, just a sweet tool from Apple called Boot Camp.

It works 99.9% with XP (maybe 100% with the fairly recent driver updates), so no worries for XP apps. For OS X, w/e apps he needs for school can probably be found for OSX as well.

[Knight]

Thanks for that response. I just did a search and found the Apple's page that described "Boot Camp". My last question is will it support the 64bit edition of XP Pro and what would be the lowest amount of space that could be partitioned for the Mac OS? He will primarily use XP ~99.9% of the time.

Edit: Has anyone had any problems with the Mac Book? Any issues with the layout, features, and/or anything else? I have a Apple store nearby and will have a look for myself. I just want to know what I might expect of the laptop down the road.

[Vapor]

Minimum? Well, if he wants to be able to see his XP files from OSX, HDD-32GB = min (could theoretically set up multiple FAT32 partitions though...hmmm). If he doesn't care, he can make an NTFS partition at any size that doesn't remove OSX files (if you cleanup OSX, probably HDD-6GB or so?).

The new Mac Books don't really have any issues tbh. Even the old ones had theirs fixed.

[Knight]

Sorry to use up your time like this, but the story continues. It seems that Boot Camp can allow me to install XP as the only OS, is that correct? (Get rid of the Mac OS entirely)

It is ok if you don't want to respond again. I will go to the Apple story over the weekend and ask them. I just wanted to know a little before I went.

[Vapor]

Yeah, you could do that no prob....but why? :p:

[Knight]

If you meant about the part of removing the Mac OS, I would say that I am a noob and have to resort using MS. :slapass: But I just don't know a lot about the Mac OS and its abilities. (How is word processing and tools like that on a Mac... I do have iTunes)

Is a Mac also more secure than a pc or laptop using a Mirosoft OS. (Besides using some fine antivirus and such)

OT: I also am worried about XSOS because I just don't know how its compatibility will be with the stuff I use.

[Vapor]

OSX is very easy to use.....grandparents love it! (and it legitimately is a good OS)

Word/Excel/blah blah blah are currently the last few popular non-Universal (written for PowerPC and Intel) apps for OSX (just means they take up more RAM and resources, but fortunately, they don't take too CPU to begin with).

It is more secure because people don't bother to write malicious software for OS X. Spyware simply doesn't exist for it, and the last mailicious virus was written some 10 years ago (there have since been proof-of-point viri, but nothing that did anything).

For a universal IM app, Adium is based on the GAIM engine with an EXTREMELY customizable GUI that also has a large community support. Lots of legitimate, free great apps for OSX, and overall use is easier.

XSOS, TBH, IDK if it'll work. If it has a similar install mechanism to XP or Vista, it should, but no guarantees, especially when you add drivers into the mix.

Something that OSX + Mac Book offers that's really incredible, is the trackpad. The XP driver doesn't match it, but does offer similar features. What's so great about it is two-finger options. By moving two fingers on the trackpad, rather than control the mouse, it will scroll. Two-fingers on the TP + click = right-click. On top of that, the trackpad + OSX just works, no faulty input, it doesn't get confused if you rest your palm on it, extremely accurate tracking, etc.

If you give yourself a week to learn on OSX, you'll be very well off and probably be liking it more than XP. Expose is a very strong GUI enhancement that's great for changing windows, and viewing all open windows at once.

There are downsides: games are practically non-existant; if you are familiar with XP, you will have to learn some new basics; you probably don't know the various apps for various tasks.

[Knight]

Thank you for you input. :) I will add this thread to my bookmarks because of all the help you have provided me. :toast: The intent of the laptop is portability and not gaming. I will take your advice, thank you. :clap:

What would you say is a better color, the white or black. The prise is ~$45 extra for the black version. Maybe I should just go for the cheaper one.

[Vapor]

Go with your taste for color, white is glossy, black is matte....neither really have scratching issues unless you do it intentionally. Black is a little more masculine (don't see many girls with it, and you do see a lot of guys with it), but the white is very, very clean.

[nn_step]

If you meant about the part of removing the Mac OS, I would say that I am a noob and have to resort using MS. :slapass: But I just don't know a lot about the Mac OS and its abilities. (How is word processing and tools like that on a Mac... I do have iTunes)

Is a Mac also more secure than a pc or laptop using a Mirosoft OS. (Besides using some fine antivirus and such)

OT: I also am worried about XSOS because I just don't know how its compatibility will be with the stuff I use.
what sort of applications?
if you have problems I am always here to help

[Knight]

Thank you Vapor for your constant advice and nn_step for your offer of assistants, but it seems that price is now a issue. :( I guess to have a more secure system you need to fork over more. I was willing to pay the price, but it seems that now I have some problems with some money flow. I will try to fix my new situation so that I will be able to one day have the luxury to own a Mac. :)

[nn_step]

actually the most secure OS on earth is Free.
Check out openbsd.org
but it takes time to make it feel comfortable

[ugp]

Actually what I was going with the new Parallels Desktop I was just running it in Virtual Machine via BootCamp. I noticed a little more speed difference due to no compression of the hard disk. But for regular applications and usage running Windows in a Virtual Machine is just fine.

[Knight]

Thank you for the link and your input ugp.

[ugp]

Thank you for the link and your input ugp.
What link? I am confused...lol

[Knight]

What link? I am confused...lol

Sorry, the link nn_step gave me.

[ugp]

LOL alright...yeah you were reading from wrong person I guess. I was like WTF!