XpOnMac
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A Weekend with an XP iMac
This weekend, I conducted a little experiment. I used Boot Camp to boot my 17-inch 1.83GHz iMac Core Duo with 2GBs of RAM and an external 24-inch monitor in Windows XP and then I forced myself to remain in XP. I didn't reboot into OS X. Instead, I explored the Windows performance on the machine. Overall, I have to admit, it was a positive experience. I still prefer OS X, but I can now see the advantages to booting into XP from time to time. One odd thing that I wasn't expecting was that I didn't find myself loathing Windows quite as much. Something about running it quickly on my nice iMac made it more pleasant than all of my previous experiences running XP on various PC boxes. It's still the fastest I've ever seen Windows perform. Half of this is probably that I didn't load it down with lots of crap programs, and I had it properly protected immediately after install with virus, firewall, and spyware protection. There were negative aspects to the experience. It hard crashed at least 5 times on me this weekend. This mostly happened when I was installing something... More after the jump...
Hello, Mac Gaming Machine
After my initial tinkering with Windows XP on my 17" iMac Core Duo, I reinstalled XP on my Mac, using Boot Camp to eliminate the original partition and build a new one, this time 20GBs in size, so I'd have plenty of room for games. I then installed World of Warcraft, since I already had a copy installed on my OS X partition that I was very familiar with and which would serve as a nice comparison. The results: WoW on Windows XP on my iMac, running fullscreen on my external 24-inch Dell monitor with all the graphics settings ramped up clocks in at about 6fps faster than my OS X installation of WoW, running fullscreen on the same display with the graphic settings pulled back to their default settings. Nice!Let the PC gaming on sleek Mac hardware begin!ps--sorry the picture above taken with my cameraphone isn't better.
Half Life 2 on a Mac
So we all know that last week, the solution was released to allow Intel Macs to dual-boot between Mac OS X and Windows XP. And a lot of people (even a few of our readers...gasp!) have been rending their clothes, twisting their undergarments, and gnashing their teeth at the thought of a Mac running WinXP. Oh, why oh why must people besmirch the glorious Mac and sully its gleaming perfection with an OS as vulgar and nefarious as Windows XP? Oh, the travesty, the inhumanity!Yeah, blah, blah blah...whatever. It's about games, plain and simple. And I knew that the first thing people would do once they got their Intel Macs to boot Windows would be to install games. Witness this video of Half Life 2 running in Windows on a MacBook Pro. Not all is perfect, however. There is no fan control on the MacBook Pro running Windows XP and so you risk cooking your MacBook Pro if you run WinXP for too long. Update: [Okay, so the jury's still out on this one; some people are reporting significant fan and heat problems, and others are not. As always, know that installing WinXP on your Intel Mac may violate your warranty, and that if you fry your Mac because there isn't actually any fan control, it's not Apple's fault, or even Microsoft's fault. It should go without saying of course: be careful. Know what you're doing.]In my own WinXP on Mac experiments, I've as yet been unable to get WinXP Pro to install on my 20" Intel iMac. Even with the newest xom.efi file, the WinXP install hangs at 0% and won't continue. So I'm playing the waiting game until the people writing the xom.efi boot loader(s) figure out the problem and release a new one.
