Virtualization Junkie and Installing Windows on Mac

Much like having the opportunity to unwrap a Blackberry and an iPhone at the same time, I’ve been building a clean Windows Server and setting up windows software development environments inside VMWare on both Windows and Mac.

Windows Native Install

I started a new job this week and have been building a new development / integration server for the new gig. The server was resistant to my intentions and required many hours of trial and error to find drivers that work. The solution ended up being simple but HP provided zero support or documentation, nVidia did not list support for Server 2003 (32bit) and there are now dozens of driver search sites that are even more ambiguous and misleading than the manufacturers. Its really not Microsoft’s fault that Vistal sucks right now but it seams as though hardware vendors aren’t really held accountable for supporting advanced use of the platform. Eventually, I got the server up and running and am quite happy with the performance so far.

Windows Virtual Install on MacBook Pro

Apple, however, made me get excited to use their machine. It was packaged nicely and, when I plugged it in, it worked. I had Vista installed and running in an hour. Of course, it is definitely worth noting that I only had to ckick a few times and was able to perform other functions during the install because it was all within a virtual environment on VMWare Fusion. So far, I’ve only clicked around in Vista under VMWare on Mac but it seems to be snappy and responsive. I have not enabled graphics accelleration so I do not have transparent windows. I think I can live with that but i may give accelleration a try later.

Windows Virtual Install on Windows

Windows just completed a VMWare installation of Vista now. It also completed quickly and required little interaction. It came up without networking and the responsiveness inside the virtual environment is very slow. I don’t think I could use it fulltime as it is. I’m sure more ram and moving it to an external hard drive would help. However, no network is a bit of a pisser. …following up, I installed VMWare tools and the networking problem resolved itself. Additionally, mouse responsiveness was corrected and the machine is now much more comparable to the Mac instance.

Results

The Mac experience was infinitely better from start to finish. The fact that Windows did not bridge networking is ironic and typical. Again, I can’t blame Microsoft for VMWare’s support of Windows 2003 Server on an HP Pavilion as a host but I sure can give credit to Apple for building a platform where I can accomplish my tasks without obstacles. I’m sure with extended use, the gap would narrow and experience would compensate for intuitiveness and ease of use. However, I am looking forward to more first experience enjoyment and less time learning non-essential, transient skills such as driver incompatability diagnostics and configuration tricks.

Tags: apple, virtualization, Vista

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