The Biz of Coding

Apple Computer Inc.’s Boot Camp — Reviews on Installation, Software and Hardware issues

by Ujwal Tickoo on April 10th, 2006

While trying to grasp Apple’s future and strategy with Boot Camp, I have been closely following the Blogosphere and Media reaction to Apple’s Boot Camp beta release. Here are some useful tid bits that I have gathered on reviews and issues related with Installation, Software or Hardware use with Boot Camp:

Installation, Software and Hardware Usage Issues/Reviews

1) CNET Editors reviewed Boot Camp. They compared the performance of Adobe Photoshop on an iMac Core Duo running WinXP with similar machines from HP and DELL. They found that Photoshop ran slightly slower on the iMac.

• They also reported that the iMac Core Duo provided a slightly better gaming experience with WinXP installed rather than OS X.

2)   Zimmerman has had the problem of his iMac losing the USB keyboard while using WinXP. He has also faced some other glitches like:

• Unwanted warning asking for "disabling TV display mode" related with ATI display drivers when the XP partition boots
• While Gaming, his SigmaTel audio drivers have given him headphone problems

3) Rob Griffiths of MacWorld has provided clear steps to installing Boot Camp and Win XP on a Mac. After having a fresh install of both Mac OS X and WinXP on his Mac Mini Core Duo he found that Mac OS X booted about 17 seconds faster than WinXP.

4) Tom Yager has posted several useful pointers on his Enterprise Mac blog on InfoWorld.

Overall, most reviews I have read have stated only a few annoyances in installing Boot Camp and WinXP. Only Jesse on his Japan Journal reported getting a reformatted harddrive while installing Boot Camp. After reading his blog, I am not very clear about the cause.

Seems like Apple’s Boot Camp team has done good ground work before releasing a usable Beta.

POSTED IN: Adobe Photoshop, Apple, Boot Camp, Gaming, Mac OS X, WindowsXP