The last PC I bought was two years ago - a high-end Dell XPS gaming laptop with all the bells and whistles. It has served me well over the past two years, but with the release of Windows Vista and Visual Studio 2008 it is starting to show its age.
Feeling the pain I bought a new MacBook Pro. Given that Apple has switched to Intel chipsets it is now very doable to run Windows on a Mac in one of several configurations:
- Wipe the MacBook Pro clean and just run Windows Vista or XP
- Use BootCamp and choose to boot in Leopard or Windows
- Run Windows using vmware Fusion ( Virtual Environment )
I did a bit of research on the subject and what I found is that most developers felt one can easily run Windows Vista or XP using Fusion in a virtual environment experiencing little to know performance degradation. This was encouraging, because I was hoping to use the MacBook Pro both as a Mac and a Windows PC. I was essentially hoping to experience the best and worst of both worlds.
So, I installed Windows XP with Visual Studio 2008 and all my other developer tools in a vmware Fusion virtual environment, and I can report that 1) it was incredibly easy to do and 2) it is blazing fast. Running Windows and Visual Studio 2008 in a virtual environment is way faster than my Dell XPS. Way faster :) At this point I see no reason to use BootCamp. When I get more time I will create another virtual environment with Windows Vista for kicks. I know several developers running Vista with Fusion so I expect to see no problems in that configuration either.
I have slowly migrated all my email, Internet browsing, and other non-development activites to the Mac environment. It is a bit of a learning experience, but I enjoyed the challenge. I typically only boot into the Windows environment for development, which is why I can't see much of a reason for installing Vista at the moment.
For those of you wondering if one can successfully develop on a MacBook Pro using Visual Studio 2008 in a virtual environment, I am happy to report you can. vmware Fusion makes it incredibly easy to install and run Windows applications in a virtual environment. More on that later.