How should you run Windows on the new Intel Macs
A lot of discussion has occurred around whether or not the new Intel based Macintoshes will be able to dual boot into Windows XP/Vista or Linux. Or more to the point, how soon a hack will appear that will allow this. For those of us that are required to live in heterogeneous environments this sure seems like a great option—being able to have a variety of operating systems at your disposal.
My needs for using Windows revolve around testing Web apps and running the occasional Windows app for which there is not a suitable Mac replacement. I suspect for a lot of users it's the same. However, I personally am not interested in the shutdown and startup time involved with rebooting. It would be too disruptive to my workflow
Running Virtual PC on my 1Ghz Mac PowerBook has allowed me to boot into various versions of Windows and Linux. The performance is often disappointing, especially when there are graphic intensive operations involved. This, of course, is due to the emulation layer that the software must go through to "fake" the software into thinking it is running on an x86 platform. I suspect it's much the same experience that Intel Mac users will experience with Rosetta. I can't wait to get my new MacBook and find out for myself!
Two things I haven't been disappointed with are running Mac Classic apps on OS X and running Linux apps via VMWare on Windows XP. Why? These apps are running on their native chipset, with the emulation layer basically being a straight pass-through. The performance is fantastic (in my opinion) and you don't have to boot out of your primary OS. The only issues seems to be some low level driver support and, well, you need A LOT of RAM.
With this thought in mind, I would suggest that having Linux and Windows running in VMWare or Virtual PC would be a way more attractive solution that dual booting. This way Mac OS X is still running AND you have access to the Windows or Linux apps you are interested in using.
Of course I may be totally missing the point. Some people may be interested in ONLY running Windows or Linux on these new Mac boxes. I can't really see many people being interested in this scenario however. I love Mac hardware probably more than anyone, but to me it's BSD based OS X and innovative apps like iLife that makes the system a bargain, not the hardware.
