When we bought our most recent computer, my plan was always to install Windows on it eventually. And now, with the VGHVI’s LOTRO symposia on the first week of every month, I’m thinking it might be time.
But I could use some advice from people who have done this before. Some context: I’m only planning to use this for games, and I have no intention of playing the latest and greatest Windows games on this machine: LOTRO aside, the most likely candidates are older games and indie games. And, frankly, I don’t expect to use it all that frequently even for those! With that in mind, some questions I have:
- What’s the recommended approach? Pure Boot Camp, pure virtual machine, or Boot Camp accessible via a virtual machine?
- What’s the current recommended virtual machine vendor for 3D graphics performance / stability? Last I was following this, Parallels seemed to be in the lead, but that sort of thing can change fast.
- Am I correct in assuming Windows 7 Home Premium is the way to go?
- Am I correct in thinking that having an XP license key alone isn’t good enough to qualify for upgrade pricing, I’d need an actual XP installation?
- Am I correct in assuming 64 bit is the way to go?
- Any mouse recommendations? For that matter, is a trackball a reasonable approach for FPSes? Not that I plan to dive into competitive multiplayer or anything, but I’m guessing that Apple’s mouse/trackpad won’t cut it for even basic Windows games…
- How big a partition should I give it?
- Any tips on finding a good price? Paying $280 for Windows + Parallels doesn’t exactly excite me… I see OEM links that claim to knock $100 off the price of Windows, but I’m worried that there are hidden gotchas there. (Hmm, digging around, sounds like drivers are harder to come by with OEM versions, but I guess Boot Camp and virtual machine solutions would each come with all the drivers they need?)
- Anything else?
Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.
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What’s the recommended approach? Pure Boot Camp, pure virtual machine, or Boot Camp accessible via a virtual machine?
I really like Boot Camp. Rebooting my computer takes about as long as booting my VM — I tried leaving it running, but it seems to slow down memory-intensive OS X programs — and I find that at best VM performance is almost as good as Boot Camp, so why bother? It’s definitely nice to be able to access your Boot Camp partition from a virtual machine — in particular, I like being able to queue up a Steam download without needing to leave OS X — but for pure gaming I don’t think it’s necessary. With that said, it sounds like you’re going to run games that are old enough to run cleanly in virtual machines; maybe someone will drop by with more specific experience there.
What’s the current recommended virtual machine vendor for 3D graphics performance / stability? Last I was following this, Parallels seemed to be in the lead, but that sort of thing can change fast.
As per above, I can’t really speak to this since I don’t use the virtual machine to actually play. (I have VMWare Fusion and like it, but the last time I used Parallels was over two years ago so I’m out of the loop.)
Am I correct in assuming Windows 7 Home Premium is the way to go?
Yeah, I think so.
Am I correct in thinking that having an XP license key alone isn’t good enough to qualify for upgrade pricing, I’d need an actual XP installation?
Yes. There are ways around that, though, if you Google. (I’m not sure if there are legal implications to circumventing the upgrade process if you have a license key.)
Am I correct in assuming 64 bit is the way to go?
I run 64-bit and it hasn’t given me any problems, but I guess I have nothing to compare it to! I suspect there’d be a bigger chance for compatibility issues with older games, but I don’t know if that’s an issue in practice.
Any mouse recommendations? For that matter, is a trackball a reasonable approach for FPSes? Not that I plan to dive into competitive multiplayer or anything, but I’m guessing that Apple’s mouse/trackpad won’t cut it for even basic Windows games…
You’re right — Apple’s stuff is bad for games. The touch-sensitive stuff like the Magic Mouse has this annoying habit of registering left clicks unless you lift your pointer finger off of the device before depressing the button with your middle finger. I have a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0, which was recommended to me as a basic gaming mouse, and I like it well enough.
How big a partition should I give it?
This depends on your habits. Currently I’m using about 85 GB out of about 110, but I have half a dozen large-to-massive games installed: Mass Effect 2 with all DLC, Dragon Age Origins with all DLC, Dragon Age II, Half-Life 1, Oblivion, and Civilization V — as well as a handful of smaller games. If you’re planning to run older games, I think you can get away with far less — not only will the games take up less space, but it’ll be less of a hassle to reinstall them if you need to.
Any tips on finding a good price? Paying $280 for Windows + Parallels doesn’t exactly excite me… I see OEM links that claim to knock $100 off the price of Windows, but I’m worried that there are hidden gotchas there. (Hmm, digging around, sounds like drivers are harder to come by with OEM versions, but I guess Boot Camp and virtual machine solutions would each come with all the drivers they need?)
In my experience people working in tech-related fields sort of accumulate old copies of Windows somehow, so maybe someone you know can help you get XP or Vista for cheap. Then you could just get one of the upgrades to Windows 7 instead of a full version, and if you hold off on the VM for now that could halve your price. (Drivers for Boot Camp are included on the OS X install disc, and VMWare will install its own set of “VMWare Tools” from within the application.)
Anything else?
I don’t think my Windows gaming usage matches up with yours as well as it could, but hopefully something in there was useful!
4/19/2011 @ 10:24 pm
David, I’m going to echo the advice given by Dan above.
When I was using my older 24″ iMac as my “LOTRO Computer”, I found that it performed a lot better in bootcamp than anything else. It’s easy to just restart and hold “b” to boot into Windows.
I’d go the Windows 7, 64-bit, yadda yadda route. Right down to suggesting that, if you have an XP license, go with the “upgrade” route.
4/20/2011 @ 4:57 am
Thanks so much for the detailed advice, that’s super useful!
4/20/2011 @ 8:12 pm