Vista on my MacBook

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I have the day off from classes tomorrow (finally!) so I was planning on going to my campus tech support place to take advantage of the free Windows installs they do. I went today to check that they were open and that I was eligible to get XP. They told me that they would be happy to help me install Windows, but they were only installing Vista because apparently XP hasn't been playing nice for them. Now, I know Vista has a rep as a memory hog, and I've only got 1 gig of RAM, so I'm not sure if the performance level of Vista will be that great on my machine. Yes, I already plan to disable Aero, but it will still probably be on the slow side, especially as I've gotten used to Linux over the past few months. Also, I've heard that XP in general seems to do better with compatibility and some other things.

So, my question is: is Vista a good idea on my MacBook? As far as memory, it might be possible to upgrade my RAM in the future if I need to (my laptop maxes out at 4GB, which is plenty for any OS, no matter how bloated) but I want to know if there are any other areas where Vista and XP differ that would affect the soundness of this plan. I don't plan on replacing OSX, just setting up a multi-boot system.

Works fine for me, and I have only 1GB on this laptop.

I've got 2GB on my Mac mini, and Vista runs fine. I run home basic.
The mini is similarly speced to the older Macbooks

It should run fine, just be sure to give windows enough space on your HDD. It needs a LOT OF SPACE!!

But... you could always use VirtualBox, and install both XP and Vista as guests, without wrecking whatever else you have already got installed.

I'm not sure how much real memory you would need to set aside for Vista. XP runs in 256M, but I've changed over to letting it think it has more RAM, so I run it with no paging files and leave the host to manage that side of things.

Oh and keep in mind that it violates Microsoft's EULA to virtualize Vista Home Basic.

It will work, however.

A MacBook will run Vista better than anything else out there. But why would you want to? If there's any way you can get XP instead, do that. If not, I guess Vista will have to do.

Well, relatively speaking, is it a bad enough idea compared to XP that I should avoid it?

I can't virtualbox much of anything with only a gig of RAM. Anyways, my Ubuntu already died, and there's usually no harm from BootCamping XP or Vista next to OSX. The main thing I'll actually worry about is securing it properly.
Besides, I don't know if they will let me install anything in a virtualbox. Even if they do, I'm not likely to stick with OSX permanently, so I would prefer to choose to boot into the OS of my choice anyways.

@Madduck: I was unaware of that. Although I favor open-source over restrictive proprietary licenses, I am still pretty anal about always following the rules. If it violates the EULA to virtualize Vista, then I won't do it.

@WurdBendur: I'm going to see if I can get them to agree to install XP on it instead of Vista. They say it risks wiping the hard drive sometimes, but reinstalling OSX isn't all that difficult or time-consuming that I would be too upset if my hard drive were wiped.

I ran XP tolerably well under VirtualBox Ubuntu on 512M of RAM.

I only had one problem, which was when I inadvertently started up a second guest (Fedora IIRC) while I was still running the XP guest.

What's "tolerably well," and how will that go for Vista? And virtualbox of Vista under OSX is probably rougher than XP under Ubuntu.

EULA's violate MY Rules!
#1. EULA. I Disagree.

So refuse to use software that includes a restrictive EULA. But don't pirate.

Is virtualbox fast?

Last edited by computerlove on 17 Oct 2008, 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Your position is valid, but calling it piracy is just inaccurate. Nobody said anything about obtaining software illegally. Some of us would just like to have freedom 0, which is the freedom to use our software however we see fit.

You should not seek the opinion of others and just go ahead and try it, see for yourself whether you like it or not.

I personally like Vista, but maybe that's because I'm one of the lucky ones that gets no problems. Everyone seems to have problems with theirs.