Installing Windows on a Mac
 

Has anyone done this? Anything I should know about before proceeding?

I have a 2011 MacBook Air, and barely tolerate the OS. I use Windows (in various versions) on a home desktop, a work laptop, as well as other computers around the house.

I use the MBA just for the following things:
* surfing the net (using mostly Firefox)
* email (gmail won't work through the web on it, so I use whatever email client it has, but would prefer web gmail through Firefox)
* watching videos (through VLC)
* listening to music (through iTunes...which is the one thing that seems to work well on the machine. iTunes on my desktop pc crashes at least once a week)
* occasional MS Office related stuff (have Mac Office on the computer)
* some printing, through a home network HP printer

The only thing I can think of, off the top, would be I'd need to install Windows Office. I can get an inexpensive license for that through work.

I've given the Mac OS over a year, and it still frustrates me. I know this is a touchy subject; whenever I post about it on FT, I get bombarded with people saying how any Mac OS is better than any Windows. So I'm beyond that, I want to move forward with Windows on the computer, and move on.
Rather than buy a new computer now, I'd like to get another 2-3 years out of this machine, with an OS I can actually use (and not just struggle with). When it comes time to replace, I've already got my eye fixed on a ThinkPad.

No hate, you tried it and didn't like it. I won't try to convince you to stay on the light side, :), but what version of OSX are you using? What you need to do is use Bootcamp, normally installed in /Applications/Utilities to get Windows to install. You also need a FULL windows licsense, not a repurposed one from another machine. Oh and an optical drive or USB stick with the windows installers on it.
Some links to help:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4410
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3986

And the most important bootcamp link:
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

I run Windows 7 on a Mountain Lion MBA and Power Mac, mainly to use Quicken for my financial data. Bootcamp, as mentioned, is a way to boot up in a complete Windows environment. Rather than do that, I run W7 on a virtual machine using VMware Fusion. Parallels is similar product that allows the use of a virtual machine with another OS inside a Mac environment. With both products, you can actually have virtual machines running more than one OS, say different versions of Windows as well as Linux.

Among other things, the virtual machine will let you easily switch between OSs on the fly, and even cut and paste between them. It's a perfectly good solution for me and many others who, for one reason or the other, need/want to run Windows on Mac hardware.

So you have two solutions - running a program that can emulate a Windows machine (Parallels or Fusion) or actually running Windows natively on your Mac (Bootcamp). For most people, Parallels or Fusion is the better choice, but given your preference to always be in a Windows environment, Bootcamp is a better choice for you.

The three options are:

Bootcamp
Parallels
VmWare Fusion

I have a late 2008 aluminum MacBook, running Mountain Lion and use VmWare Fusion seamlessly. There are advantages/disadvantages of each, best to invest $15.00 and read this eBook before making a decision and installing: http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/windows-on-mac

Can you elaborate on this issue if you are interested in fixing it?

gmail works fine for me in the browser or with any email client. Double checked firefox since that's what you said you are using.

If you aren't interested in running OS/X, bootcamp is probably the way to go.

-David

My gmail is through my grad school. To access it through the web, I need to log into the school's alumni network, then it does a pass-through to email/gmail. For some reason, that pass-through doesn't work on my Mac; I've tried with Firefox, Safari, and IE. It just opens a new window of the alumni network.
Very odd, because on any PC it works smoothly. Probably a quirk with the school's system. I'm sure I can't be the only person who has a Mac, but it just never seemed a high priority to complain (and I don't know who to complain to). I use the Mac Mail through POP/SMTP when I'm on my Mac, or just use my iPhone (same way, but oddly I can use web gmail on my iPhone with Safari).

And no, I can't log into gmail directly. The school has it rigged that you need to use their system. I get username/pw issues if I try.

I've said I was tempted to just get a whole separate gmail so I didn't have to deal with this, and I think I have one (probably more than one), but just never use it, and it probably went inactive. Most (95%) of my email goes to a virtual email address; I just need to say which email to actually send it to.

yes, very strange.

They must have some help/instruction pages with any special setup you might need for it to work on a mac.

Have you tried it in safari or chrome?

-David

Ive been running parallels for years on many macs, works great. Or, shall I said worked great. I tried to log yesterday to windows 8, putting in the same password Ive done for years, and it didnt work. I cant get into parallels now, need to figure out how to get in. Otherwise, its great.

I've had 2 different Macbooks over the past 4-5 years running Windows for certain Windows only programs that I need. You do get a slight performance drop when running Parallels(what I use) or VmWare Fusion, but unless you are running some VERY resource intensive software/programs, the ease of using the virtual machine definitely outweighs having to reboot every time you want to switch for a small performance bump.

I would be likely to use a virtual machine rather than Bootcamp. I ran Windows in a virtual machine for years due to an application or two that were either not available at all or really inferior on the Mac. I don't have that problem now and have deleted the virtual machines but they worked great when I used them. I have used VMWare as well as VirtualBox. The latter used to be free as I recall.

If you really think you'll want Windows as your primary OS, you should use bootcamp. I have friends who did this at work for various reasons and it worked great for them.

I use VMware Fusion which is great, but I don't suggest it or Parallels for your use case.

If you are semi computer literate or enjoy tinkering Virtualbox is free. Of the choices shown, Boot Camp is an annoyance having to a) dedicate space for the Windows partition that will be either far too big or far too small and b) having to reboot to do one thing. It's free, only advantage.

Between Parallels and Fusion, you could not pay me (or pay me back) to keep using it. The tools installation on upgrades never worked once properly so I switched to VMWare Fusion and haven't looked back.

To be able to use Windows while still in OSX is the obvious reason to use only virtualization.

Buy OEM versions of Windows vs. retail and the savings will pay for Fusion and leave you with $100 on top of that. It is the same software.

If you need to use Windows a lot a Windows PC is so cheap it barely costs more than a retail version of the OS.

Fusion 5 rocks.

After being forced to use a ThinkPad for work the past few years, I was given a budget to buy whatever I wanted. I spent it all on a MacBook Air with max memory and a 512 GB SSD. But my company's software runs on Windows, so I need to have Windows.

My solution was actually easy -- I didn't even have to rebuild a Windows system. I used VMware's Standalone Converter to convert my existing ThinkPad into a virtual machine. I run it via Fusion. It took a few hours, but everything just worked perfectly (with the exception of a printing issue I was able to fix in a few minutes using the Google).

4-5 years ago, Fusion was slow and painful to use. These days, I can't tell that Windows is running as a virtual machine. Could be the SSD in the MacBook Air - I really have no idea. And I don't care, cause 99% of the time I am working on the Mac side (although the Windows VM is almost always up and running).

I installed Windows 8 on the ThinkPad just to play around with it. It's fast, but unless I could figure out a way to make it look and behave exactly like Windows 7 or XP, I'd probably throw the machine from a moving car.

Like RichMSN, I switch from a Windows machine to an for work. For work software (and to VPN in to the work network) I also am using a VM--I used to use Fusion, but have switched to Parallels...both are fine. I use MS office on the Mac side for all of my documents, spreadsheets and powerpoint files. But I use Windows MS outlook for my mail and calendar. The trickiest thing for me was to get print drivers and network authentication fully functional for work printers.

Given what you said in the OP which I read as "I will never run OS/X", I don't think it makes sense to run windows in a VM. I stand by what I said earlier, bootcamp is the way to go.

You will use OS/X to install bootcamp, then run bootcamp setup assistant to create a windows partition, etc, and then use bootcamp to boot the windows installer and never look back. Isn't that what you wanted to do?

If you want to read the docs on how to do that, start here: http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

On the other hand, if you plan on running both OS' and particularly if you just need windows to run a few programs that you can't run or don't run well under OS/X, then, sure, a VM would be the way to go, but that's not what you said in the OP. Am I misinterpreting what you said?

I did a p2v thing and I run vmware fusion, but just because that's what I do, it doesn't mean that's what makes sense for you. That's what I thought, but I guess everybody else here feels that you should be doing what they do because it worked for them.

-David

Exactly. Feedback in a forum like this is going to be what people want to say, not necessarily what people want to hear.

Ah yea, if you don't see yourself ever using the Mac OS, then just run Windows in Bootcamp. I was under the impression OP would still be using the Mac OS for some programs.

I like parallels. Works seamlessly. You can run your windows programs direclty in the OSX shell without even booting the windows os shell on the VM. It is as if you are running a mac program.

If he uses bootcamp doesn't that mean OSX is still there? Can he just install Windows and then zap OSX off of the drive?

I'm in the same situation as the OP. I have 2012 MBA and I haven't even powered it up for 6 months as I cannot stand the OS. I really need to do a clean install of Windows 7 and get rid off the Mac OS. I do like the hardware but I have not been able to get my head around the "package".

Yes.

Sure .. other people have done it. I haven't. (the process is to use a standalone program to reformat the disk, getting rid of OS/X partitions, and just create whatever partitions you want and then boot the installer.)

For example: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/win...go-there/14714

Either sell it or install windows on it. Bootcamp is the easiest way if you never ever intend to run OS/X.

-David

Just my 2 cents worth but if you really want to run windows then you should get windows optimized hardware to make the most of it, Macs are made to run OS/X.

I have run windows (I still stick with xp!) for years on my mac both through parallels and bootcamp, purely to run windows only software I have found that running via bootcamp has much better performance than through the VM. If you plan on using your MB as a Windows machine you definitely need to go down the bootcamp route, I know others have mentioned partition space etc however you can access both the windows and mac drive space from either o/s for storing files just not for installing applications.

I ran Quicken with Parellels while waiting for the new Quicken for Mac to come out a few years ago. When it came out, the reviews were awful-a repeated comment on Amazon was that the reviewer gave it one star only because Amazon does not permit a rating of no stars.

Then we tried IBank on our Mac o/s and it is wonderful. The report capability is not as good as Quicken but entry recording is much faster and easier and it is very evident that this system was designed and coded in the modern era, whereas Quicken is the current upgrade from a program written long ago. Going from one security or account to another is a snap and it finds accounts and credit card numbers after entering the first few charecters.

Dumping Windows was the best tech move we ever made, and dumping Quicken for IBank was the second.

Note: You will have to re-enter account info and starting balances. We did not bother to go back and re-enter each purchase of stocks, etc from years ago. Most of the big brokerage firms keep that data anyway. I kept my old Mac with Quicken on it in case we have to go back to some ancient transaction. I think I've used it twice in 2 years.

I'm running Windows 7 Pro on my new MacBook Air under Fusion 5.0.2 and it's faster than any Windows laptop I've owned.

I went to iBank a few years ago and I've never looked back.

Nobody should begrudge your right to use Windows, even if we have a different personal preference. However it is fair to question the wisdom of installing windows on a Mac if that is your preferred OS. There are dozens of great laptops that run windows, most selling for fare less than the Apple equivalent.

If I had any desire to run Windows I would be happy to save a lot of $$ and just purchase a Windows system. There is nothing special or unique about Macbook Air except that it is easy to use right out of the box, which I have yet to find with any Windows product (or most non-Apple products of any kind).

You've already gotten 2 years out of a product with an average lifecyle of 3 years, so you simply be accelerating your next purchase by a year or so. And I'd be happy to step up and buy your current unit as my Macbook is 6 years old and thus well beyond the expected obsolecense cycle.

A simple PM would have sufficed, hopefully this doesn't start another war of words.

Btw, apple fanboy here :D

I have found that VMware is the most reliable solution, and allows you to seamlessly switch between OS's. It is a little bit more expensive than Parallels if I recall correctly but worth the extra money.