I've run Vegas under Boot Camp for 2 years and have loved it; I recently bought Parallels (version 3). I'm on Leopard 10.5.6 and Vista Ultimate. I have Parallels configured to run the Boot Camp installation of Vista.

Vegas runs under Parallels, but for me the performance is much less than it is running natively in Boot Camp. I can edit, but my frame rate takes a hard hit. To be fair, the video I've edited this way was on a USB drive, and I'm wondering if virtualizing affects drive performance with the USB drive. I just got an eSata drive / connector, so I'll test that and report back in this thread.

For me, it's a no-lose situation because Parallels has other value for me. If I'm doing serious editing, I can easily reboot into Windows and run via Boot Camp. If I just need to quickly check / change something, I can open Vegas up in Parallels and, since it's using the Boot Camp installation of Windows, I'm not managing a third "computer".

Rick

ritsmer: Thanks a lot.

RNLVideo: The following article agrees with you:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/parallels-4-review.ars/4

On the other hand, the same article shows results from the "CineBench R10" benchmarking application [http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/CINEBENCH.shtml], and these results show that for Vista 64bit, Parallels4 is only about 10% faster than Bootcamp. Shame their test doesn't include XP 32bit under BootCamp, Parallels 3 and Parallels 4. Parallels 3 is of interest since some claim (running apps under) it is faster than (under) Parallels 4. Results might vary by machine in any case, so I guess that's something I'll have to do the hard way (on my 8-core Mac Pro), but at least one can (I assume!) use this benchmark app as the basis of a repeatable objective test to get hard results.

Just a matter of curiosity: why do you want to manage 2 operative systems (Mac OS X and Windows XP) - keep them updated - search endlessly on the internet to improve errors etc?

I run XP SP3/Boot Camp on a Mac Pro because it was, by far, the cheapest way to get 2 x quad Xeons - but my next machine will be a "genuine" Windows machine.

Mac/Windows has been a pain - i.e. the Boot Camp update 2.1necessary for SP3 - which requires a registry hack in order not to just disappear after some minutes of installation without any error message or any hint. And also Boot Camps little thing about allowing XP only to see the first 2 GB. That really did cost me $$$$ for nothing. Mac spareparts are incredibly priced.

Mac spareparts are incredibly priced.

What are these spare parts you need?

Not hard drives obviously, as they are the same as for PCs and I find I can add/swap them faster than in my PC workstations.

And for anything else. Macs come with a long warranty, and after that you can get a warranty extension through an AppleCare agreement, $250 from Apple or $125 through their resellers on eBay.

I got the machine with 2 GB and after a couple of months I decided to buy 2 GB more. In order to keep a good resale price I bought original Mac Pro RAM at 500 US plus 25% Danish VAT plus transportation - and that is - to my opinion - pretty incredible for 2 x 1 GB RAM blocks...

First, as my XP then claimed that it could not see the extra 500 US +++ RAM blocks, I found out that Boot Camp has a unexpected and silly limitation of max 2 GB available for XP :-)

You should have bought RAM from OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory).

Absolutely made to Apple specs, and the 8GB RAM I immediately added to the factory minimum 2 GB in my Mac Pro would cost me today $185.99 (wasn't that much more last summer).

Thanks.

From experience you become wise, rarely rich :-))

@rismer:

Thanks for the warnings on BootCamp re SP3 and 2GB limit.

I was at a video exhibition, just went away to consider an "exhibition price" I'd been given on a PC when I passed by a Mac stall, asked questions, discovered the reasons listed below and came away with their "exhibition price". Then a "son in law" with media background brought over an Apple G5 to play with and I was impressed with its smooth silent operation. The rest was instinct - I hope I got it right!

Reasons (in order of priority):
* A foot in "both worlds" - giving the flexibility to accommodate and experience both the operating systems and a variety of editing / post processing tools. I understand that OSX is far more efficient than XP at "close to the chip" virtualization (latest intel chips are specifically designed to support virtualization and OSX is the first OS to take advantage of this support). I know it is possible to run OSX on a PC but I'm not sure how above-board, supported or sustainable that is.
* Greater confidence (at this naive early stage!) of stability.
* Cheaper, for the whole package (RAID etc).
* The Mac hardware is pretty good - less noisy too.
* Compatibility with a colleague who recently obtained a Mac.
* Handles on the top. Always dreamt of having handles on the top...

On Stability:

I have been avoiding the SP3 update for now, just as I did SP2 when it first came out. I have been advised to use separate machines for work and for general use, only updating the work machine on an infrequent basis, and not in the middle of a project. Ideally I should keep it off the internet. Thanks to Parallels, the "non work" machine need not be a separate piece of hardware, provided there are no accidental cross-infection mechanisms (e.g. no shared file areas between the virtual machines).

Another advantage of virtualization is that updates can be tested out on "disposable" virtual machine clones.

Apart from OS updates, simply installing any new apps, even commercial ones, always worried me because in the past for example such installations have overwritten existing DLLs in the System32 folder with their own same-named and almost but not quite identical functionality DLLs. Such foul-ups can remain unnoticed for months, or maybe just degrade stability or efficiency in subtle ways that, being subtle, one just accepts as "normal". Naughty programming practice on their part, but it has happened, even once caused by one of the biggest names. Wasn't obvious - took a couple of days to uncover. OSX being derived partly from (BSD) unix gives me greater confidence of this being avoided.

This still leaves things like the Boot Camp and indeed Parallels update scenarios. That's like messing with the foundations! Happily, OSX isn't so fussy as XP re activation etc so it's simpler process to clone the whole system to a separate test system disk. I understand it can even be an external one. Indeed that's how I intend to test a restore from the backup I'm making right now from its "system disk" partition. I'm doing it the KISS way, not using OSX's Time Machine just yet but instead booted from a LiveCD (CloneZilla) to save a compressed image of the (therefore not in use) reasonably unsullied system partition to an external drive (in ext3 format), before I start to sully it in various fashions by using it for real. Tomorrow, if the backup completes ok, I'll test it by restoring to another partition and booting from that. Fingers crossed!

It's a hell of a learning curve (when I'd sooner be editing) though made easier by one of my friends being an expert on disk management and unices, including OSX and linux. He is Phil Jones who wrote "Knowing Knoppix" (one of the first linux LiveCDs), available as a free pdf download. Now I have to know more.

fausseplanete -

Regarding easy backups - for your Boot Camp partition... Check out Winclone. From OSX, Winclone makes a compressed image of your WIndows partition that you can save off. If you ever have trouble with your Windows install, you can restore it easily from within OSX right to your Boot Camp partition.

I upgraded from a 120GB HDD to a 320 GB HDD. I used the Mac Disk Utility to clone my Mac partition (just in case) and Winclone to clone my Boot Camp partition. I installed Leopard fresh onto the new drive and used the Boot Camp utility to create the Boot Camp partition. Winclone restored my Windows partition painlessly. I was up and running very quickly. I now use it to make regular backups of my entire Windows partition (did one tonight and it took about 30 minutes for 45GB - going to an eSata drive).

Rick

Winclone is the ticket for your Windows partition.

For your OS X partitions (and secondary disks), Superduper! is the software you want.

This is my overall favorite piece of systems software of all time, and I really wish it was available for Windows.

Jawdroppingly easy to use and jawdroppingly powerful. First fix is free (free trial), then $27.95 if you like it (I'd challenge anyone not to).

I got Parallels early on, but switched to VMWare Fusion when it came out. Totally stable, and some better features (not to mention the free upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0, rare these days).

There is also the free VirtualBox, which totally meets the needs of some users.

See Macworld Review.

Thanks all for all the advice. I (belatedly) report back now for posterity more than anything, just to show that I acted on the advice with good success and to describe the backup system I arrived at and some experiences in using it.

I obtained a 1GB USB external drive and split it into the following partitions, all in HFS+ format: "Bootable Backup 1" (48GB), "Bootable Backup 2" (48GB), "Time Machine" (400GB), "General" (435GB). The first two are for bootable backups of OS X. The "Time Machine" partition is devoted to that very application. The "General" partition is divided into folders for "Mac System Volumes", "Parallels VMs" and "WinClone Partitions" (e.g. BootCamp). All these partitions are excluded from Time Machine (in it's Preferences).

This basically works well, apart from the Bootable Backup partitions sizes because although they were adequate for the basic OS X, which amounted only to 7GB, since installing FCS the system volume is now 106 GB. Much of that is just bundled media files, but the word on the street is that moving these invites trouble. Great!

Now I propose to use iPartition to move some space into the "Bootable Backup 2" partition. I hope that Time Machine works only at the level of file system, not physical sectors etc., so that it won't know or care about that. I guess a prior backup of the backup wouldn't hurt...

I haven't up to this point used SuperDuper, because straight Disk Utility full backups (compressed ".dmg") have been adequate. But prompted by FCS's bloat, maybe I ought to give it a try now.

The Parallels/VMWare competition continues I guess, but as it stands I found Parallels 4 (build 3810) better than VMWare 2.0. It performed faster than VMWare on the Vegas rendertesthttp://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=637832, completing in 5 min 22 sec as compared to VMWare's best of 7 min 22 sec, in both cases the best happening when VM cores=2 and vegas threads anything >=2. Also Parallels supports OpenGL which VMWare does not, and some relevant apps (like Blender, though I've not tried that under Parallels yet) rely on OpenGL. And despite initial fears born of P4.0's early release, it works with no obvious problems. As virtualizers can interfere with each other and VMWare did not fully uninstall, I did a roll-back to an image prior to its installation.

Great work!

You can download the free version of SuperDuper, it's the same except scheduling and some amazing features that aren't needed to get a perfect backup.

It really is my favorite system utility of all time. Trying it is loving it.

I'm sitting here cursing HP's similar workstation backup utility, as well as a few other solutions for Windows.

I hope SuperDuper develops a Windows equivalent someday, but I won't be holding my breath.

Btw, 10% (well, 9.93%) of web users in January were on Macs:




It looks like the Big Fish is eating the Little Fish, but for the moment it is actually the other way around:




And Firefox is at just under 22% now, who'da thunk?

"Winclone is the ticket for your Windows partition.

BOOTitNG will do both. It's a great little program... been using it for years. It's saved my butt many times.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm