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June 19, 2006

windows

My journey to the Dark Side: Running Windows Vista on my Mac

Posted Jun. 19, ’06, 7:50 AM PT by Aaron Freedman
Category | Windows

VistaThere comes a time in every Mac user’s life when they must turn to the dark side, they must use Windows. Even though I have already installed XP via Parallels on my Intel iMac (more on that to come soon), I only used that for running the PC-only game, Magic: The Gathering Online. But this time I was going to set out to run Windows for no real purpose besides proof-of-concept. I was going to Boot Camp.

To start off my journey to the fiery depths of Hades, I first needed a Windows Vista Beta 2 .iso (available here), a free Windows Vista Beta product key (also from here),a blank DVD, the latest firmware for your Intel Mac, and Boot Camp. Then, I performed the following steps:

1. Burn the Vista install .iso to a DVD using Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility) by selecting the .iso in Disk Utility and clicking “Burn.”

2. Install the firmware, if not already installed.

3. Run the Boot Camp assistant and partition at least 20 GB of space for your Windows partition (40 GB to be Windows Premium-ready, though if you have less than 1 GB of RAM you cannot be Premium-ready).

4. Reboot into the Vista install DVD.

5. Follow the install instructions until you get to the screen which says “Custom Install.”

6. Click on “Custom Install.”

7. On the partition table, delete the first partition, which should be 200 MB (NOTE: By doing this you can not use Boot Camp to re-apratition your hard drive anymore. To restore the partition, see here http://guides.macrumors.com/Vista_Beta_2_on_Macbook_Pro).

8. Click on the partition which has the same amount of space as the partition you created with Boot Camp (it should read “Primary” next to it).

9. Wait for the install process to complete (about an hour).

10. When your computer reboots, you should see an error message (if not, just continue with step 13).

11. Reboot from the Vista install DVD, and instead of clicking on “Install Now,” click on “System Recovery Options” in the bottom right-hand corner.

12. Select your Windows install, click “Next” and click the first option in the window (it should be something like “Repair Boot”).

13. Reboot once more, making sure to hold down the “Option (Alt)” key and selecting the “Windows” drive to boot in to (whenever you nee to boot into Vista, you must use the “Option (Alt)” key).

14. Finish the install process, and let the computer auto-restart (make sure to hold down the “Option (Alt)” key).

15. Follow the instructions to set up your user account and Internet connection (ethernet should work fine; if you use Airport you have to wait until a little later).

16. The X1600 video driver should kick in (unless you have a Mac Mini or MacBook which use an Intel integrated graphics card) and Vista should be running fine.

17. Go to “Start > All Programs > Windows Update” to run Windows Update and install the Airport drivers.

Well, that’s the process for installing Vista. Now it’s time for my experience with it.

Vista was better than I expected, but still far worse than OS X. The new “Aero” user interface makes Vista look sleeker than XP, but kind of makes everything seem a little strange (the transparent windows are a bit weird). Aero also allows you to see “live previews” of programs from the taskbar. This is a somewhat cool, yet still unnecessary part of Vista. Still, even with Aero, Vista has pretty much the same layout as XP, with the tray bin and taskbar on the bottom, the QuickLaunch menu, etc. Also, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11 have the menus at the top of the screen (File, Edit, etc.) hidden. This can be a minor annoyance, as hitting the “Option (Alt)” key is required to bring them up, though many functions in the menus can be accessed from buttons in toolbars.

The live search in the Start menu runs faster than Spotlight, though Spotlight’s UI looks much better. Also, the Windows search has a built-in Internet search function, while Spotlight requires a plug-in for this feature.

Flip 3D, which is a “3D” application switcher for Windows Vista is no where near as good as Exposè. It’s slower and more choppy, and the 3D effect isn’t that cool.

Internet Explorer 7 is a major improvement over IE6, but still not as good as Firefox and some other browsers. The lack of the menus at the top of the screen can make it confusing to figure out where all of the buttons that replace those functions are. The built-in pop-up blocker and phishing alert are nice, and the tabbed browsing works well, except I can’t seem to find a way to change the default web page that comes up when you open a new tab (“about:Tabs”). The new search menu in IE7 is nice, and allows you to add a variety of search engines including Google, even though this feature, like tabbed browsing, has been in browsers for a long time now. Of course, IE7 lacks the plethora of extensions that Firefox uses, and most likely IE7 will soon become just as vulnerable to malware attacks as IE6 and earlier.

Windows Mail doesn’t seem to be a huge improvement over Outlook Express, as it keeps the same interface.

Media Center is mostly similar to Media Center on XP, though I did experience a crash when I tried to change the sound settings. Media Center is much more full-featured than Front Row, though I’m sure soon Apple will make Front Row much more advanced.

Windows Media Player 11 has a new, streamlined interface, though overall it is very much similar to Windows Media Player 10 for XP. It still doesn’t even go near matching the simplicity of iTunes, and none of the included music stores (MSN Music, Napster, URGE, etc.) offer as much content as iTMS (podcasts and TV shows, in addition to a ton of music).

There’s still a lot more that I could talk about Windows Vista, but this covers the bulk of it. When I first installed Windows Vista, I admit I was excited about running it. But as time went I on, I have now realized that Vista isn’t really anything more than XP repackaged with some ripped-off OS X features. So if you want to play around with Vista, go ahead, but remember that OS X is still, especially compared to Vista, “insanely great.”


2 Comments

Michael said:

GREAT review man, you reviewed 5 of the 2452 features. Well, you're a Mac user. That's obvious...

BTW, iTunes sucks, it's just like a sql Database.

June 19, 2006 11:07 AM
PC User said:

WMP 11 is the most unfriendly media player I've used. Browsing by album or artist is a handy feature that I will be happy if included in iTunes, but WMP actually forces you to browse via those views. To see your all library you need to go to the library tab, open the pull-down menu and prees "music". This is just plain stupidity.

The main reason I downloaded it was the promised ability to sync effortlesly with different music players. Every time I plugged a player (not an iPod) WMP just froze and had to restart.

Vista does look much better than XP, but I think that the security improvments sum up in some irritating dialog boxes. Hope it will improve until it will be released (whenever that is)

June 20, 2006 12:38 PM

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