(no subject)

[bzarcher]

There's no reason I -need- one of the new Macbook Pros. I mostly take my work laptop out when I need to take notes somewhere and I've never hard a problem using it when travelling. Plus I'd have the added fun of needing to grab WINE or parallels for some of the "killer apps" that I tend to use in Windows on a day to day basis. (EVE, Vent, Steam, EFT, EVEMon...)

But on the -other- hand....daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. I want one. Please?

Comments

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Joiiiiiin usssssssss.....

You even get a free black mock turtleneck.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Also: Bootcamp is free and VMWare Fusion is out now.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I wonder Fusion does with gaming.

[ardaniel]

BootCamp will handle CoX just fine.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Does that do a full reboot or just start a virtual machine?

[las.livejournal.com]

Bootcamp does a full reboot - it's not virtual. Windows runs flawlessly on my Mini.

[ardaniel]

As Lucy said, full reboot. demiurgent has CoH running in Parallels, though-- he's Scholarman on the boards.

EVE, I dunno.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Full reboot to windows would be fine, I'm sure. I'm just curious about virtualizing it, mostly. :)

[las.livejournal.com]

You can virtualize it through Bootcamp and a copy of Parallels - you do the Bootcamp partitioning/installation first, then use Parallels to access the Windows partition and run the OS. I haven't tried it yet, but some people prefer the setup.

[canemex.livejournal.com]

It's okay, but you have to watch how you register Windows, because under some circumstances it tries to make you do it twice.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Mr. Barker has it just right - it's the price.

With so many things up in the air, economy wise, I can't afford one right out of pocket, and buying one on credit seems risky.

[las.livejournal.com]

*touches your pain, feels it*

[buschap.livejournal.com]

Does what you have work? Then it can wait. And it'll be cheaper and/or faster if you do.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's probably the way it's all going to play out. :)

[canemex.livejournal.com]

Protip: Darwine suxxors and I'm not sure that Parallels actually supports Direct X yet or not. It doesn't matter if it does, because Parallels will eat your memory and keep it in its greedy belly. It's an $80 brick.
Practical solution: Crossover Games. Less expensive than Parallels; actually works. $40. Is actually a commercial fork of WINE. Recommend it v. much.

You could also dual-boot it with great ease, but let me warn you aforehand that I have had extreme difficulty dealing with how Windows drivers handle the Intel graphics cards that typically come with Macs, rendering me totally incapable of playing any Steam game ever. (It does work if you use Crossover, though.)

Basically, I'm an expert at using my Mac to play games and can answer any questions about it you might have. :D

[buschap.livejournal.com]

Interesting, because vanilla Wine has gotten pretty damn good on Linux. I had a Windows 2000 partition I rarely used that I fired up to play Portal. I was getting errors that I could find results for online, but no solutions. So I rebooted back to Linux, installed with Wine, and had no problems other than my computer is only borderline fast enough to play it.

[canemex.livejournal.com]

Vanilla Wine is excellent, but Darwine is done much, much more slowly by different people. It also sucks because Tiger X11, thanks to Apple, doesn't support OpenGL. I've been told this has been fixed in Leopard, but I haven't upgraded yet, so I don't know. But yeah, Wine in Linux has gotten consistently good marks.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Is Crossover doing DX9 or DX10?

And, y'know, there is that new NVIDIA card series going in there. Hmmmm.... :)

[canemex.livejournal.com]

I'm half-hoping my hard drive will go nuts so I can get a new computer ahead of schedule...

Also, Crossover definitely does DX9 (after all, it runs TF2) and I'm not sure if it does 10, but I would not be surprised if it does.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Well, we can certainly give you interesting ideas about making the HDD go nuts. :)

Woot! Thanks for all the info.