Hello,

Here's my question: If there was two laptops both with exactly equal specifications, an Apple Macbook Pro and lets say a Sony Vaio. Would the MacBook still be able to run Windows XP as fast as the Vaio through bootcamp/parallels etc. Or would it run slower because its not the native OS. And would you still maintain all the functionality of XP through bootcamp/parallels etc?

Thanks...

An Operating System running in a virtual environment will not perform as well as an Operating System running natively on the same hardware.

Parallels provides a virtual machine environment, but does not support "all" the functionality of Windows XP - For example, there is no Direct X support in Parallels.
Parallels Desktop for Mac (http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/)

Bootcamp is a dual-booting process that allows you to run Windows XP natively on the Intel hardware in the Mac. Running Windows XP in this way would give you "all" the functionality possible on the hardware, and would definitely run faster that is would running the virtual machine provided by Parallels in the MacOS.

I am running a MacBook Pro 2.33 with 2Gb of Ram one allocated to each environment.

I use Parallels on a daily basis and it can be awfully slow running through my Airport Extreme (and even via Gigabit when on the office network) when it is trying to access Act and Sage, I often get no response to network traffic and it eventually comes back.

I couldn't hack reboots needed for BootCamp and for me Parallels does a good enough job.

If you are looking a data throughput then you have to actually look at the application you are running and insure the they are optimised for the platform you looking to run it on.

Hard rules to follow regardless of platform.

1) Get the fastest processor you can afford - this works in nano seconds
2) Get the most RAM you can afford - this works in nano seconds
3) Get a Big Hard disk - this works in milliseconds
4) Only buy a laptop if you MUST move around

If you think that the processor and RAM (the brains) of the system can perform a million actions compared to one by the hard disk, the less hard disk activity calling in code to the processor and ram the better the performance.

Why only buy a laptop if you have too? Because making things small and robust costs money, the processors are not a powerful as the desktop and towers, the hard disks in laptops run at about 2/3rds or 1/2 the speed of 3.5" one. Generally your paying for the ability to move around not for the best computing technology that's available in the marketplace.

So Mac or PC, is totally down to what App's you have to run.
Laptop or Desktop, is totally down to a life style choice.

Good luck

Paul

My Toshiba R705 takes 3 or four minutes to settle down when booting windows 7 Pro. My Mac Mini i7 with 8gb ram and ssd is ready to go from a cold boot in about 30 seconds and that is booting both lion and Win 7.

Astounding ! I know the ram , ssd and processor is a big help but really. Why is the Toshiba so slow?