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.