For Mac users, installing Windows is now a snap

In the past week, I installed Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (SP2) three times, and loved every minute of it. This wasn't the usual Windows installation experience — or should I say reinstallation experience. As in: "The only way to solve that problem, sir, is to reinstall Windows on your computer."

Rather, I installed a brand-spanking new version of Windows XP Pro on an Intel-based Apple Computer iMac. And then, not quite perversely, I did it again. And again.

Each of three methods I used had its advantages. All prove that Mac users who need or want to run Windows won't need a separate computer.

I won't repeat the old canard that there's more software for Windows than for the Macintosh. Windows applications may have the sheer numbers, but the relevant part is whether the software you need is available on your preferred platform.

Attending Boot Camp

Requirements: Intel Mac, latest firmware upgrades, Mac OS X 10.4.6, blank CD-R.

Installation: Download free beta of Boot Camp from Apple site (83 MB). Install and run Boot Camp Assistant. Choose a partition size for the Windows volume. Burn a CD with Apple's drivers for its hardware that you install under Windows. Apple recommends printing lengthy but clear instructions. Reboot with Windows CD inserted and install Windows.

Process: Straightforward, despite the many steps, although some missteps are irreversible. For instance, choosing the default C:\ drive partition in the Windows installation process would wipe out your Mac OS X system.

Results: Windows XP installed in about an hour with no hitches. After finishing the Windows configuration, I used the CD I burned to add Apple's drivers for full access to audio, network and video options, among other features.

Speed: Fast on the highest-end iMac.

Warnings: Boot Camp is a beta. Fully back up your system. Stories already abound of wiped disks and other boot problems, although these appear to be in the minority.

Mounting volumes: Windows partitions mount as readable volumes while booted into Mac OS X, although only partitions formatted with the older FAT32 method can also be written to. To mount Mac OS X disks (HFS/HFS+ volumes, technically), you need MacDrive 6 for Windows ($49.95, www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/).

Quaintly Q


Requirements: Intel or PowerPC Mac, Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Installation: Download free software (5 MB). Install. Create virtual disk using more obscure but good instructions on the project's Web site. Install Windows.

Process: Slow but straightforward.

Results: At more than two hours for an install, and very slow system operation, this is clearly a work in progress, but that's why it's called an alpha release. Optimizing for speed generally happens during this stage of testing and even into betas.

Warnings: To avoid frustration, set the Boot From menu to CD-ROM in Hardware pane when creating virtual machine. Otherwise, Q won't read the Windows installer.

Mounting volumes: As with Parallels, virtual machines network with other computers, including the Mac host.

And certain specialized scientific, academic and networking software runs only on a single platform — or has a superior developer on one operating system — whether that platform is Windows or Mac OS X.

Even I, a 21-year veteran Mac user, must fire up my Windows laptop to run NannyPay because I couldn't find a similarly inexpensive and full-featured domestic employee-payroll package for Mac OS X.

Millions of present and future Mac users may fit the bill of needing limited Windows operation. Having one's Mac and running Windows too may be the answer, although it requires a new Intel Mac.

Until Apple made the decision to switch from PowerPC to Intel chips, the only well-supported way to run Windows on a Mac was via Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac and similar products, such as Lismore Software's Guest PC.

Virtual PC et al. use a virtual machine — a kind of bubble that makes an operating system think that it's running on hardware instead of within software. Virtual machines are portable, meaning that you can run the same virtual machine on many kinds of hardware that wouldn't otherwise support a particular operating system. But virtual machines on a PowerPC had to emulate the processor instructions of an Intel chip.

In emulation, every minute instruction has to be translated from one processor's language to another in software, which is always enormously slower than running directly from hardware. Running on the fastest PowerPC G5 systems, virtual machines were still pretty sluggish.

If you have a compatible processor, you don't need emulation for a virtual machine. The virtual machine becomes a thin layer that uses minimal translation as it carries out instructions. Which brings us to Apple's announcement three weeks ago.

Apple's Boot Camp is not a virtual machine, which came as no surprise. Apple wanted to make it possible — though not appealing — to run Windows.

Boot Camp creates a special partition on an Intel Mac and installs only Windows XP SP2 (Home or Pro editions).

When installed, the Mac can boot up or restart into Windows XP or Mac OS X 10.4.6. Each OS must run separately and only one at a time — which means a lot of rebooting unless you spend uninterrupted time in one program or another.

A day later, more significant news arrived: a small company offered up a public beta of virtualization software called Parallels Workstation, rewritten to work under Mac OS X. Parallels Workstation can run most Intel-based operating systems from Windows 3.1 through XP, flavors of Unix, and even IBM OS/2.

Running in "Parallels"

Requirements: Intel Mac, Mac OS X 10.4.4 or later.

Installation: Download free beta (15 MB). Install. Create virtual disk using simple instructions and start it up. Install Windows within virtual machine.

Process: Straightforward and painless.

Results: Windows installed in about an hour. Parallels has tools to improve video compatibility and other peripheral support. Confusingly, the physical CD must be ejected before these tools are installed through a virtual CD the program mounts.

Speed: Quite good. While noticeably slower than the natively booted Windows, performance didn't lag, and routine activities such as Web browsing seemed fast enough to avoid annoyance.

Warnings: Although the software is in beta, the virtual machine means that only the virtual machine and Workstation software should crash if errors are encountered. That said, I had to force-restart the iMac twice during installation and testing of the fourth beta. These kinds of issues are typically worked out during beta testing.

Mounting volumes: Mac and any virtual machines appear to each other as networked computers, so Windows File Sharing within Mac OS X works just fine.

A day after that, the open-source and free project named Q released the latest stable alpha version of its virtual-machine software for Intel Macs. Q, an offshoot of the earlier Qume emulation product, can simulate several kinds of processors.

I was able to install Windows XP Pro SP2 successfully under each environment with no snags. Even in alpha and beta versions, these are viable ways to run Windows on a Mac.

Costs and timing

Boot Camp will be part of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) whenever Apple ships that new release, possibly this fall. Apple typically charges $129 for a single-user copy of its system with no discount for upgraders. Parallels plans to release its package soon for $49.99, with a $10 discount for orders placed before it ships. And Q costs not a dime, though donations are accepted.

Where the cost adds up isn't with any of these products. Rather, Windows is the pricey part.

Hardware prices continue to plummet, but software development has fixed expenses and operating systems have only increased complexity over time. That's a kind way of saying that Windows, burdened with legacy users and a way of doing things, is expensive to buy on its own.

The Home edition runs nearly $200; the Pro version with advance networking and other options, almost $300.

Virtual PC for Mac comes in a bundled version that includes Windows XP already installed in a disk image for $249 — a high price given that Microsoft makes all pieces of that puzzle.

PC makers pay Microsoft a reduced rate, typically under $100, to bundle Windows XP Home with a new computer. Dell, for one, charges $150 to upgrade Home to Pro on its entry-level desktops, so it's not cheap in the all-Windows world, either.

However, if you can avoid spending several hundred dollars on a PC just to run Windows, the cost of buying the operating system is trivial.

There's one more element, however, foreign to Mac users. Windows XP requires activation, a process that records a snapshot of your hardware and sends it to Microsoft's systems, which reply with an encrypted activation code you never see.

If you install a copy of XP via Boot Camp on a partition and then want to install the same XP on a virtual machine, you won't be able to activate both.

You have 30 days to activate after installation, which allowed me to install one copy of XP three times during testing.

The Holy Grail for this kind of virtualization would be a single disk image that could be used as a partition to boot a computer for the fastest performance, but also work as the disk image for a virtual machine.

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to gfleishman@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists