WinXP via Parallels on my MacBook

Well, after listening to Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte’s enthusiastic and favorable review of Parallels Desktop for Mac (in Episode #59: Comparing “Parallels” VMs) I took the plunge this weekend, buying and installing the program. The software itself took less than sixty seconds to install. My installation of WindowsXP from scratch, however, took many, many hours– mainly because the version of WinXP I have is Service Pack 0 (the original version) and there are a mind-boggling number of security patches to download and install. 🙁 I also installed a fair number of freeware/open source programs (including requisite anti-malware apps) as well as Norton AV and MS Office. (Yes, I know I could get by with OpenOffice, but I have a new VBrick EduCast streaming appliance that has a PowerPoint plug-in- and yes, it requires MS PPT.)

The image above shows 62 updates, but that was just one of at least ten different update sessions I had to run.

The great news is, Windows XP runs EXTREMELY FAST on my Intel Core-Duo MacBook, and I’m extremely fired up about this. Unlike the BootCamp solution, which requires rebooting from the Mac OS into WinXP, with Parallels I can dynamically switch in between operating systems on the fly. This is similar to the functionality of Virtual PC, which I was using back in the late 1990s, but it is MUCH faster because it runs at the native speed of the processor cores. Virtual PC is still available for Windows and Macintosh platforms and is free, but it is MUCH slower and less functional than Parallels according to gurus Gibson and Laporte. (See Episode #57: Virtual PC versus VMware)

I don’t anticipate running Windows much in my free time for fun– but I do have opportunities to teach workshops for teachers about Windows-only software programs like PhotoStory 3 from time to time. I have one of these workshops next week, in fact, right here in Edmond where I live. During my workshops on digital storytelling I like to show a lot of examples, and almost all of these are saved in QuickTime format on my MacBook hard drive. By using WinXP via Parallels on the same computer, I won’t have to do any computer switching or moving to teach my workshops even when we are using Windows-based software like PhotoStory.

I did learn tonight that extending / increasing the size of a Windows partition you have created requires more than just running the Parallels “Image Tool” program. Before increasing the size you have to duplicate the partition, set the original up as a second hard drive, boot from the duplicate one, and run some command line instructions to “extend” the size of the virtual HD. If you don’t, WinXP won’t recognize the partition size as having increased. See this thread for more details.

I’m eager to see how this goes next week in an actual workshop. I’ll share a full report afterwards!

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes' free newsletter. Check out Wes' video tutorial library, "Playing with Media." Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..

• Rediscovering 10 Year Old Deleted Podcast Files - 2021
• Beware of Genieo Adware on Apple Computers - 2013
• Share Your Ideas for K-12 Online 2011: Purposeful Play - 2011
• Construction Engineers and Concrete Masons can save MILLIONS of lives (Haiti earthquake story) - 2010
• Remote Control iPad Presentations #edapp - 2010
• Online Content Can Be Persistent (even when people try to take it offline) - 2010
• Again, U.S. federal funds used to strong arm state legislators - 2009
• The Maine Department of Tourism is Taking Care of Travelers - 2009
• Lunch with Clay Shirkey and Alan Kay - 2008
• Obama on Flickr and Validating Information Sources - 2007