Running Windows on Your Mac?
Are you sure you even need Windows?
One big thing that has been trumpeted about having Macs based on Intel processors, is that you are now able to run Windows on them at a respectable speed. Before we look at how you can run Windows, and indeed Linux on your Mac, let’s first ask if you really even need to.
If all you need to do is access a Windows-based corporate network for files, printing and email, then there is a good chance that you don’t even need to install Windows on your Mac at all. Even if you want to run programs that aren’t available for the Mac then there is an alternative that may already be in use within your company.
Without adding anything else, Mac OS X 10.4 can be integrated into a Windows Active Directory environment, allowing you to control who can access the Mac and what resources they can access on the network.
The same account works if you are on a Mac or a PC, which means that you can log onto any computer using the same user name and password. There are a few limitations, as Mac OS X doesn’t currently support either Windows’ Distributed File System or Signed SMB, plus you can’t manage the preferences on a Mac connected to Active Directory as you can with a PC, but these can be overcome by installing ADmitMac from Thursby Systems.
For larger networks of Macs, you may be better off creating what is know as a “golden triangle” of Mac, Active Directory and Open Directory, where you use an OS X Server to manage the configuration of the Macs and to provide storage of user’s home directories.
If your Windows network doesn’t run Active Directory but uses either Netware or Linux for it’s servers, then there are solutions for integrating Macs into both of those. Prosoft’s Netware Client for Mac OS X allows Macs to authenticate against Netware when the user logs on, automatically mounting their Netware home directory and allowing them to use Netware print queues. Since LDAPv3 is at the heart of Mac OS X, then connecting to Linux networks is a breeze and can be done without adding any additional software.
Once you are connected to your Windows network, what can you do?
If you use Exchange for email, then you can connect to it with Mac OS X Mail and Address Book for basic email. Or you can use Microsoft Entourage if you want access to Scheduling, Public Folders or Calendars. Taking things one-step further, you can use Microsoft Messenger for Mac as a client for Windows Live Communications Server 2005. If you have Novell’s Groupwise, then there are Mac clients for both Groupwise 6 and 7, but there are a few features missing from the Mac version, so the web client is probably the path to choose. Finally, if your system is Lotus Notes or Domino, then Lotus have a Notes 7 client for Mac OS X.
If none of the above suffices and you need to actually run a Windows program because there isn’t a Mac version, or another program that will do the same job, there is one final option to consider and that is to use a terminal server client. It is becoming increasingly common in the Windows world to run certain programs on a central server and then just give the users access to a session running on that server, rather than having it on their own computer. This can make better use of resources, particularly if the software needs a lot of processing power, so you can use a lot of cheap desktops and a few expensive servers, and is a great way to run software over the internet or via a 3G modem. If your network already makes programs available via either Windows Terminal Services or Citrix Presentation Server, then there are Mac clients for both of these systems.
Virtual machines
If you’ve read through the above but none of the solutions seem to fit your needs, maybe because your network admin won’t play ball and make any necessary changes to their systems, or because you don’t even have a Windows network and simply want to run Windows-only software on your Mac, then you will need to choose one of two options for playing with the dark side. You will need to either use a virtual machine, or reboot your Mac into Windows. Actually, there is a third option that does away with Windows completely and allows you to run Windows programs directly under Mac OS X, but support is limited to a few specific applications so we won’t be discussing it in this article.
The easiest way to get Windows on a Mac is through a virtual machine, using an application that makes a copy of Windows think that it is running on a separate PC. If you were thinking that this sounds suspiciously like Virtual PC then you would be right, to an extent.
Whilst Virtual PC was a virtual machine, it also had to deal with pretending that the Mac had an Intel processor when it really had a PowerPC. That was the main reason that running Windows on Virtual PC seemed a lot slower than actually using a PC, but now that Macs have Intel processors, there is no need to pretend to be a different chip any more and so a virtual machine running on an Intel-based Mac should be about as fast as running directly on a PC.
There are a few pros and cons to running a virtual machine, which mean that it may not be the right choice for every situation:
Pros:
• You don’t have to stop what you are doing on the Mac if you want to use a Windows program.
• You can cut and paste between Windows and Mac applications.
• It is easy to take a snapshot of the virtual machine so that if a
Windows virus or other problem hits you, then you can simply revert to a good version.
Cons:
• Since Windows has to go through another program before it can talk to your Mac’s hardware, there are some programs that don’t perform too well. This is getting better as support for 3D graphics in virtual machines is continually improving.
• Microsoft’s End User License prohibits the use of Windows Vista Home editions within a virtual machine so you have to use the more expensive Business, Enterprise or Ultimate versions.
There are two virtual machines available for Mac OS X and they are Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, although Fusion is currently only a beta release. Both programs have similar feature sets and the developers seem to be in a bit of an arms race with each other, as soon as one adds a feature the other starts talking about something similar.
This can only be a good thing for customers as it spurs development of better products. Things are developing at such a pace that by the time this has been published, things that currently distinguish one program from the other may well be available in both, so I'm not going to tell you what they can't do and instead will focus on what they can. In the past few weeks Parallels have released Desktop 3.0 and VMware have released Fusion Beta 4.
With these releases it is possible to:
• Run a Windows program without seeing the Windows desktop, so that you have the appearance of it just being another application on your Mac, albeit one that still looks like a Windows one.
• Take an existing PC and create a virtual machine from it. Be aware though, that legally you can only do this if the PC does not have an OEM version of Windows on it.
• Make a snapshot of the virtual machine that you can restore at a later date.
• Use a copy of Windows that has been installed with Boot Camp.
• Suspend Windows so that you can pick up from where you left off when you quit the virtual machine.
Boot Camp – Now and in the future
A virtual machine is great if you need to use Windows occasionally, or you don’t need the ultimate in performance (though it does come close). However if you need a real PC on your desk rather than a virtual one, what are your options?
Firstly, you could always buy a PC, and if you get a Keyboard, Video & Mouse switch you can switch between it and your Mac easily. However, even though you can pick up some PCs fairly cheaply you still have to pay for hardware that you may not use all of the time and a cheap PC will probably not be as quick as your existing Mac.
Add to that the space that an additional computer will take up, which may be at a real premium if you have an office at home or even worse if you have to travel a lot and don’t fancy having to tote two laptops around with you.
Now that all Macs have Intel processors they are, to all intents and purposes, PCs as the hardware is basically the same. All you need is a copy of Windows, the drivers for all of your Mac’s hardware and some way of setting your Mac up so that you can choose whether you want to use it with OS X or with Windows.
Boot Camp from Apple provides everything except the copy of Windows, which you will still have to buy. If you buy your copy of Windows at the same time as your Mac you can buy a special version known as OEM which is considerably cheaper, but which has a few restrictions, such as not being able to move it to another computer should you want to later on.
Boot Camp itself is pretty simple. Once you have downloaded it, you use it to create a CD containing all of the Windows drivers for your Mac and then you partition your hard drive into one section for your Mac and another for Windows. Once you have done that Boot Camp Assistant prompts you to insert your Windows installer disk and then restarts your Mac.
From this point on there is very little difference between installing Windows on your Mac and on a regular PC. The only major thing to watch out for is what choice you make when you get to format the hard drive for Windows.
If you choose NTFS for the format then your Windows partition will be read-only when you are running Mac OS X. If you choose FAT32 then you will be able to read and write files on the partition from OS X that you can later use in Windows. Having installed Windows, you will need to install all the Apple drivers, just like you would have to do with any other PC. These are on the CD that you created earlier.