Colour Me Happy
Boot Camp, baby.
When the Intel Mac were announced my first thought (well, okay, sixth or seventh) thought was “My next Mac will finally allow me to get rid of the Windows box.” But it was just a vague concept. I mean, it could just have easily applied to a Quad G5 as it does to the Intel iMac.
All I use the Windows Box for is testing websites in IE6 and playing video via VLC. My PowerBook can do a better job with VLC, but the Windows box has the advantage that I don’t have to connect up the cables every time. My PowerBook can’t run Virtual PC fast enough to make using IE6 on it more convenient than just booting up the Windows box. Getting the noisy, space-consuming box out of my hair has been a dream for years. It’s only recently that the G5s really got fast enough that I’d be perfectly happy running XP on them via Virtual PC. But the Intel Macs held a promise of a much better solution.
When the hackers got XP booting on the iMac, I was happy. Not overjoyed, but happy. An unsupported dual-boot scenario is just rife with potential problems, but I figured the significant speed boost the iMac offered over my ancient Compaq would be more than worth it. The lack of video drivers wasn’t too much of a concern to me because I wasn’t planning on anything more challenging than IE6…
All that is changed now, of course. Not only has Apple made it easier to install XP, they’ve made it a supported configuration and provided video drivers to boot. This is very exciting, and validates my ‘decision’ to hold off on buying an iMac for a few months. (It’s not budgetary considerations, it’s a sound technical waiting period, honest!)
Of course, real virtualization, that would let Windows run full speed alongside OS X with complete support for the video card is still the ideal, but an Apple-provided dual-boot solution with a complete set of drivers suits me down to the ground.
