Two worlds, one laptop
Posted by marshall Thu, 20 Apr 2006 06:22:00 GMT
I recently found myself the elated owner of a shiny new dual-core MacBook Pro with 2 GB of RAM and 256 MB of video RAM. It's a wonderful experience. But perhaps the greatest part of it is the recent developments in dual-booting and virtualization. First Apple shocked everyone by coming out with Boot Camp. which supplies the long-lost BIOS CSM that was missing from the EFI-based Intel Mac hardware, along with key drivers and a ridiculously easy partitioning tool, making it exceedingly simple to dual-boot between Windows XP and Mac OS X. Then, just days later, Parallels introduced their virtualization solution, which is nothing short of amazing.
Like Virtual PC, Parallels runs Windows XP in a window inside OS X, but unlike Virtual PC and every other similar solution, it's fast. Very fast. I now have TextMate open in OS X on my main display, and the ever-infuriating Internet Explorer open in Windows XP on my secondary display, and the mouse pointer just glides seamlessly between them. Run full-screen and combine with Virtue for 3D transitions between OS X and Windows desktops. It's exactly what I've been wanting for web development, and I sure could have used it in Indonesia last year for configuring the Tranzeo units we had in the internet cafe (whose web UI inexplicably worked only in IE, and just barely at that). Windows XP boots and runs much faster in Parallels than it does on my P4-based Dell GX270. With Office and IE running in Parallels, and a dual-boot configuration for high-performance 3D apps (e.g. games), there really is no reason to have a Windows-only system anymore.
