I took the leap today and migrated all of my business apps to my MacBook Pro. 90% of my work can be done on my Macintosh and now the other 10% can also be done on my Macintosh. What do I mean by that? I mean my Mac is running both Mac OS X and Windows XP at the same time!
There are two options for running Windows on a Mac: Boot Camp and Parallels. While Boot Camp is nice, it requires me to reboot every time I want to switch to Windows XP. Not very fun. Parallels is a bit slower than Boot Camp, but when used in combination with VirtueDesktops and ShadowBook, I am able to easily and seamlessly switch between my Mac and PC counterparts.
The only things I need to do on the Windows side are maintain the Active Directory settings and Exchange server. Everything else from E-mail, browsing the web, editing video/audio, monitoring servers and maintaining our Cisco-based network can not only be done on the Mac OS X side, but they can be done better than in Windows XP. This is what makes the MacBook Pro so powerful in the workplace. I don’t have to worry about my primary OS getting a virus (although the Windows side can still get infected with a Windows virus), I get a stylish and elegant BSD Unix (Darwin) operating system and I get one great looking/fast laptop running it all.
I first started my adventure with 1GB RAM in the MacBook Pro allocating 512MB to Parallels. This was a bad thing and both the host and guest OS slowed to a crawl. I then scrounged around and grabbed another 1GB RAM for the MacBook Pro leaving the 512MB RAM for Parallels but giving the Mac OS X side 1.5GB to work with. Both operating systems benefited from this as everything became much, much faster.
To make it easy to switch to the Windows side, I have also installed VirtueDesktop which gives me virtual desktops in Mac OS X. When Mac OS X boots I switch to a desktop I call ‘Windows XP’ and run Parallels. I have that virtual machine set up to auto-run Windows XP and then go full-screen at the native resolution of the LCD monitor. I can then switch between desktops in two ways: I can hit my key combo of alt-arrow to have the Windows or Mac side slide into view or, if I’m running ShadowBook, I can wave my hand over the laptop and the operating systems will switch (feel the power of my Jedi force).
All in all the process took several hours over the course of the last few days. Finding the right hot-key combos along with performance settings for my machine was just a bit of an adventure, but now I have everything set up the way I like it. If you have been thinking about switching to a Mac, but are afraid of losing your investment in your Windows programs, I think this solution will work very well for most people. This is a great way to get the elegance of Mac OS X while maintaining the work flow some companies require with Windows XP. I may not be a fan of Intel processors, but Apple’s move to Intel seems to have really paid off. This is simply awesome!
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