Rogue Wolves is the professional website of freelance software consultant Scott Langevin.
Boot Camp to Parallels in 10 "easy" steps
Submitted by scott on July 18, 2006 - 9:47pm.
Okay I'll let the cat out of the bag: I bought a MacBook. I've had it for a month and it's awesome. I'll leave the review of it for another day (I've been working on a post but can never find the time to finish it).
When I first got the MacBook my plan was to install Boot Camp on it so I could boot into Windows XP every now and then for some Windows Mobile development I've been working on. Boot Camp worked really well but has a major problem: You own a mac to run OS X and all your OS X applications. I have all my productivity applications and data setup in OS X. I don't want to have to install windows equivalents and set them up so I can have access to my mail, IM, word processor, etc. I'd rather use those applications in OS X and be able to work in Windows....enter Parallels.
Parallels is a virtual machine that runs on OS X that will let you virtualize your x86 hardware. This allows you to run other operating systems at the same time as your main operating system at near native speed (provided you have LOTS of RAM). This type of technology is amazing for software testers and application developers who work in one environment but test/develop for another. No rebooting madness or computer switching. Plus if your buggy software pulls down the operating system...just kill the virtual machine and restart it all while still being able to work on your machine (great time to check your email).
Note: To date I believe Parallels is the only virtualization software that takes advantage of Intel Virtualization technology
So back on point. I started with Boot Camp and it worked well but rebooting all the time was annoying and not having access to my data and applications was even more annoying. Parallels was the way BUT I spent a bit of time installing Boot Camp and getting it all configured for my work. I didn't want to waste lots of time starting from scratch and rebuilding yet another work environment. Wouldn't it be cool if you could take your Boot Camp install and transform it into a Parallels install?
That's exactly what I did, but I can't take credit for this amazing feat. I give big props to Colddiver (whoever he is) for posting this set of instructions to migrate Boot Camp to Parallels. Well done.
How did it work out? Really well. The speed of Parallels is really great. I'm running Windows XP in a virtual machine and then running an Pocket PC emulator inside that and it's not slowed to a crawl. I do have 2 gig of RAM though which helps greatly. The only major snag I found was that the switch over invalidated my Windows XP install and I had to call Microsoft to get a new activation key. No biggie. It takes all of 5 minutes to get a new one.
If you are in a similar situation my advice would be to start from scratch and install Windows fresh in the virtual machine if it's reasonable to do so but if you don't have the time these instructions work pretty well. Also note you will need a good amount of hard drive space to perform these steps. I had an external firewire drive that did the trick.
Good Luck!
Oh and if you use Parallels go and use it along with Virtue Desktop. I'll let this video speak for itself. Heck use Virtue Desktop even if you don't use Parallels. It's wicked cool. Amaze your friends.
curious about speed tweaks
heyaheya scott! long time no chat! hope you and robbie are both doing well! (and the dogs)
I am lusting after a macbook myself, and have recommended it to a few friends, who have made me envious by buying it, and then getting me to "outfit" it for them... gah. oh the life of a student. ;-) (only 8 more days of class!!!)
i saw this last month on Ars, wondered if you have tried it out and if its a.) a decent speed boost, b.) stable, c.) worth the effort.
link 1: http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/6/27/4459
link 2: http://www.multisolar.com/software/PDTweaker/
i'd also be interested in any iCal sharing/gCalendar integrating or iDisk/.Mac account type systems you have encountered and played with.
(my lovely 1Ghz G4 iBook died on me in april. hours afer finishing and printing off one of my papers, thank dog. still. it made me very very sad. i am now reduced to using my mini, and jana's pink G3 600 iBook... I yearn for intel luv!!)
take it easy!
will.
PD Tweaker
Hey Will!
If you have the cash, I'd definitely recommend the MacBook. It's quite simply the best machine I've ever used or owned. You get a lot of value for your dollar. I'll post more about it hopefully later this week.
Thanks for the links about PD Tweaker. I did know about it and I was waffling on whether to give it a try. So far Parallels has been running really well. I've been pushing this MacBook to it's limits with all the applications I run at the same time and it hasn't slowed to a crawl. Note I did upgrade it to 2 gig. I think if I didn't have 2 gig I'd definitely try the PD Tweaker but honestly PD Tweaker is a hack and it kind of scares me.
For now I'm going to try and get along without it and wait for Parallels to release an update (they know about the issue).
As for my data synchronizing adventures... I was using iFolder for synchronizing my personal files and it was working fairly well until I got this MacBook. There is an issue with Mono on Intel Macs that (as far as I know) hasn't been resolved yet. iFolder is pretty nice once you have it running but it requires a webserver that acts as the data repository. It's pretty nice to be able to access your files from a browser if you are away from your computer. You can find out more about it in my earlier posts on this site.
For my calendar and todo data I push out my information to iCal files which any iCal compatible email client can subscribe to via my webserver. Apple's iCal has a limitation with this though. It does not support read/write subscribing to an iCal file. So currently you can either push out your data to an iCal file or read in data from an iCal file. Not both. So if I want to use another email client on another machine and subscribe to that iCal file I can't modify my data and expect those changes to magically show up in iCal. Sigh.
Now if gCalendar supported subscribing to iCal files that would be cool. That'd be a free web view of my calendar information. I know I can import it manually but who wants to do that all the time?
That sucks about your iBook! I really love mine but I've sadly outgrown it. It was a great machine for getting me up to speed with OS X. It served me well. Hey you want a used G3 iBook for parts? :)
huh!. might take you up on
huh!. might take you up on the g3 partsBook. whats the skinny?
2Gb ram sounds luscious. id love to get my hands on a macbook... but its pretty far down on the list after paying off debts and loans and stuff right now.
I keep thinking of flipping my macMini onto OS X server, and running the webstuff for ical etc off that (ive seen a few ways to simulate .Mac that appear to actually work)
when i have a few free days ill get right to it. ha ha.