# Want to hear about the Dual Boot up of either Mac OS X and Windows XP w/SP2



## joeeye (Apr 5, 2005)

I just picked up a brand new 17 inch Mac Pro Notebook after being a Windows user for the past 20 years. 

I've done some reading about dual booting, but I'm not understanding some of it and would like to ask some questions and hear from you.

I like both OS so I want to take advantage of being able to have the dual booting option, this is what I understand is the only way you can have Windows on your new Apple/Mac computer.

I read I can either boot up into Windows XP w/SP2 "or" the new Mac OS X that came with the notebook. 

Did I read it right that I need a new full blown copy of Windows XP w/SP2? so am I right that when I choose to boot up into Windows it will be exactly like the Windows I'm familiar with, and not some Mac flavor, style and design version of Windows?

I would greatly appreciate it if I hear from every body who knows about this and have even done this all ready. 

Please feel free to reply back as long winded letter that you can, I really would like to hear how things went, thanks very much, Joe


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

well, to answer your question, yes. ok, now let me fill you in. there are several ways of having os x and win xp on your new mac. 1st, the way apple is helping out with. if you buy the full blown windows xp sp2 installer (not upgrade, and it must be a one disk installer, not a muti-disk installer) you can use apple's bootcamp to set up the mac to do dual, independent, boot. which means you will run mac os x, or windows xp. and when in xp, it will be just like you were on a pc. there will be no difference to you at all. but it will mostly be like you have 2 different computers, because as far as i know, windows will not see the mac part of your hard drive, and the mac part will be able to see the xp part of your hard drive, but not be able to write things to the hard drive, so you will not be able to transfer files between the 2 oses easily. 
now, for the other options that you have. because of the technology of these intel cpus, you can in a way run 2 computers at once on them, its called virtualization technology. the main player in this field is named parallels. and many people seem to like it. it will run windows xp inside of a window in the mac os. with this you will not only have to buy a full copy of windows, but will also have to buy parallels. but unlike boot camp, you can run any version of pc os, not just xp sp2.
then thanks to the unix community, there is the wine project which allows windows apps to run on the host os as independent apps just like the native apps. the mac os x version is crossovermac. and with this, you do not have to buy a copy of windows, just crossover.
remember, that all three of these are the main examples of what is being done, and all are just outside of beta, so they are not perfect, and will have some issues. now which one is right for you? well, lucky enough, they are all free to try, if you have a windows installer already. and it depends on what you need to do with windows. like for me, i'm a gamer, so the only real one for me to use if i had an intel mac would be bootcamp. but i much rather have cossovermac because it would integrate the windows apps in the way i like best, seamlessly. so chew on this, and ask any more questions that you have.


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## joeeye (Apr 5, 2005)

Wow, thank you for that perfect break down.

All three options sound good, I'm tossing around the first two, Boot Camp and Virtualization Technology.

I'm hoping its not too much trouble if I try them both, you know with deleting what I change my mind about, things like that.

In doing that by trying both I just might end up buying two copies of Windows, I want my Windows to be XP Media, then if I don't go with Virtualization Tech. you know Boot Camp is only going to take Windows XP w/SP2. I should take a better look at what the differences are between the two Windows, this might make this easyer.

I do want to start recording TV shows, movies, things like that, to get more active in movies and recording. 

Thank you very much, this helped a lot, Joe


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

if you really want to do that kind of media typr stuff, i think you'll find that the software that came with your mac will be perfect. i have yet to find any windows software that can beat the fetures of imovehd and idvd, let alone the price (free with a new mac, or $79 as part of ilife). i only thing i had to do was buy a mac compatible tv tuner/video imput device. what i got was elgato's eyetv 250. and i love it. with the included eyetv 2 software, i am able to set up a time to record, it turns on my mac and records the show. then later i export the show to imovie, edit out the adds and add dvd chapters, send it to idvd, make menus and then burn it to dvd. imho, elgato's eyetv 2, apple's front row, and apple's ilife software make for a better experience than windows xp media edition could ever be.


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## joeeye (Apr 5, 2005)

I agree the software that came with my Mac looks to be great for all the media type of stuff I want to do, even though I have not used it yet, I never used any type of media, so I have to learn what your doing and talking about, I can't wait to get into it.

The other half of it is knowing and trusting what hardware works well to do it, so that's another reason I keep asking, I'm glad I did because I see you mentioned the "EyeTV 250", so I looked into it and they show it hooked up to a notebook like mine, that was great!!! it looked awesome!! this is what I want!!! What you had to say seemed to be perfect. I have 1 Gig now of memory, I think I'm going to bump up to 2 GB Memory to make sure I have the resources.

Oh yeah, I want to ask anyway even tho I believe I know the answer, I guess the recording quality is as good as what is comming thru the cable TV line? Yes? I'm yet to read more on this, but I thought I'd ask first if there was anything in place that made for a great viewing picture while playing back the recorded movie/TV show?

Also, I guess you can watch TV and its not just a recorder?

I'm off to read up on it and to buy one, thanks again!! Joe


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

well, remember that it will never look as good on your monitor as it will on a tv, that is because the monitor has a higher resolution then the tv, so to show it on your screen, it blows it up. to get a good example, take a pic that is 640x480 and then set it as your desktop background. its not all that horrible, but its not that great too. but when put on the tv screen, it will look fine. also your viewing will only be as good as your reception. i have really cheap bunny ears on my 250, so it doesn't always come in well (i don't have cable), but if you have cable, i'm sure it will look much better. so yes, the quality is only as good as the cable. but i like the 250 because it does the tv signal to disk converting on board, not on the mac. its called a hardware encoder. so all your mac is doing is copying the info to the disk. very low cpu use. i was able to record with my old 466mhz cpu with no issues. where some other tv things are software encoders, which means that the computer's cpu is doing the converting. you'll want to avoid those. but when you convert the recored video to imovie, it will be the computer's cpu that does that. on my 1.47ghz mac, it takes it just under an hour to convert an one hour show. so on your laptop, i'm sure it will happen in less time.

btw, yes, it is a tv tuner, so you can watch tv. and the 250 is the white box one (there were two links right next to each other, the elgato one to the main site-which shows some other silver tv thing in a laptop, and the second link on the eyetv 250 taking you to the info on the 250-showing it with a mini).


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## joeeye (Apr 5, 2005)

Thanks, thats good to know to look for the hardware encoder rather than the CPU doing all the writing.

I was thinking now, I can see why you have this set up being you don't have cable, it make perfect sence for you. 

But ever since you have shed some light on this for me about the picture quality, it just hit me that I should look more towards along the lines of a VCR to record TV shows/movies.

Also to mention, if I did do this, about the higher resolution that the computer monitor puts out making the picture quality a little less desireable, I'm wondering if I can get around that by using the external digital video output that my Mac notebook has. I'm wondering if I was to step it down to a small 14 inch TV set that I have?

Just a thought, I don't know anything about this type of thing, I'll guess there would be a huge difference between the two units with their signals and spec's matching so to work together.  plus, I don't even think it physically possable to connect the two?


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

the picture quality on the monitor is only poor because it has to be scaled up on the monitor. it is only for viewing, it doesn't change the actual video files. if you were to get a eyetv 250, record a tv/cable show on your computer, have the eyetv 2 software export it to imovie hd and then use idvd to burn it to dvd, when you stick the dvd into your home dvd player, the quality you see on the tv will be the same as if you watched it on the tv when it aired.


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## joeeye (Apr 5, 2005)

Oh okay, that will work out good with my set up, I finally got a decent TV, it's a Toshiba that has a great picture quality and a DVD and VCR built right into it, the picture quality is the best I ever had.

So this will work out good because my girl friend house has better cable shows, so being mobile is nice, then after I get my movies onto the DVD disc I can walk right over and pop in the DVD.

The software must be pretty good on the eyetv 250


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

this is the software that comes with it, it seems to do all they say it does. but i havn't tried the apps own editing system yet, i use imovie hd. and so far, i love it. i just need to get a better antenna for the 250.


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## joeeye (Apr 5, 2005)

Software looks good, its nice that its geared towards Mac rather than speaking generically.


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