Should i put Vista or XP on my Mac? + other win questions from a macman

The_Glad_Hatter

okay, i have a new imac waiting for me at the store at this moment. excited, finally having an intel chip so i can install Windows and debug my sites for IE properly.

it's a maxed out 27" imac i7, quad 2,95 ghz, hyperthreading, 4GB ram, 2TB HD.

Now, my questions are:
1) What version of windows should i install? i have a lot of (old) experience with xp. But i also have an unused vista licence disk (school promo offer). i've heard so many bad things about vista. Is it that bad? Haven't they patched things out by now?
i don't mind using XP, but i wondering about support/ updates/ long term stuff (don't wanna reinstall in a year...)

2) How big should a descent windows partition be? i'll be using it for site debugging (html, css and light java).
i suspect that if i do any gaming, the mac steam stuff will be enough. Can i adjust this partition size lateron? Do i need to format the entire thing to install the windows partition?
Will i be able to communicate between my mac partition and my win partition ie. getting files from one to the next? View its folders? Have a kind of dropbox/shared folder?

3) anyone know a good light css/ html editor for windows? I use Coda on my ibook and would love: a nice WYSIWYG preview mode, splitscreen modes, and instant validation. tooltips would be nice since i've only just quit dreamweaver and still need some training wheels.

i'm currently using my ibook G4 and have been a bit out of the loop with the latest whistles and bells. Anything else i should know about mac+win?

ronzo

1) Why not put Windows 7 on it? It basically all of the good parts of Vista with none of the suck. XP is old as shit and won't fully use the 4 gigs of ram you have

2)How big the partition should be is based on what you plan to do with it. A win7 install is about 16-18gb, and steam games these days can get pretty largish.
You will not be able to resize this later, but since you have a 1TB drive, just partition something like 250gb.
You can format and reformat that without breaking the mac side.
If you go with 7, i know that the mac side can read the windows side and vice versa, but they cant write unless you install extra software

3)this stuff i have no idea about

Fagatron

1. Buy Seven if you can.

XP gets more vulnerable every day, and Vista, while greatly improved, still gets laggy after awhile.

2. Not too big! I've actually just gone through the process of doing a triple boot (OS X, Seven, and Ubuntu) with a Storage partition and with the Storage partition you don't need that much space. 20 GB should be sufficient. I did 40/40/20 OS X/Seven/Ubuntu (not in that order). You can also install NTFS 3G and use the NTFS Storage partition for both OS X and Seven/Vista/XP. I haven't written up the process yet but I've been meaning to do that anyway, let me know if you're interested. Partitioning gets trickier because the way I did it the disc is using MBR instead of GPT and the OS X Disk Utility doesn't like that. Windows Disk Management is still able to do things but it doesn't keep the data currently on the partition intact. If you can user a Linux Live CD or you keep a partition with Ubuntu or another flavor of Linux on it Gparted will still do things just fine, and keep your data intact. Also, if you intend to do any real gaming I would advise also installing the Steam client for Windows. It doesn't cost extra and there aren't very many games that have been ported over for OS X (yet, that might change, maybe).

3. I don't know that much about that stuff. Every time I needed to edit HTML/CSS I always used Notepad.

Fagatron

I am going to advocate a Storage partition again. You can share it for program installs for both (or even all three of) the OSes, and if anything ever happens to your Windows install your data has an extra layer of protection.

Also don't let Tuxera fool you, there is a free version of NTFS 3G, I am using it, so far the only weird thing is I hard shut down Windows and OS X freaked out and said the NTFS partition was inconsistent, but I'm sure (after independent testing from the Windows side of things) that's just OS X being finicky about unmounting drives.

ronzo

Echoing the "use steam on windows" comment

the mac side is terrible compared to the windows side (like a 20fps drop), so theres no reason not to use windows for steam

adytum

Echoing 7, it runs flawlessly on my computer, and yours is more powerful to boot.

RBach

7 is nice (and better than XP or Vista IMO), but if you're not interested in, you know, buying a copy of it Vista will probably be just fine for you. As others said, if you actually want to use all of your RAM you'll need 64 bit Vista or 7 to do so. On the other hand, you may not really need all that memory available for your planned uses.

mcdermott

RBach wrote: »

7 is nice (and better than XP or Vista IMO), but if you're not interested in, you know, buying a copy of it Vista will probably be just fine for you. As others said, if you actually want to use all of your RAM you'll need 64 bit Vista or 7 to do so. On the other hand, you may not really need all that memory available for your planned uses.

This. Don't buy 7 if you have a perfectly good copy of Vista sitting there. 7's better, sure, but not worth the money unless you're getting a killer deal on it.

EDIT: And yes, 99% of the problems that led to "lolVista" back in the day have been fixed. It's a perfectly decent OS, and there's nearly* zero reason to choose XP over it.


* - Unless you have one of the few programs with compatibility issues. Which you almost certainly don't.

The_Glad_Hatter

mcdermott wrote: »

RBach wrote: »

7 is nice (and better than XP or Vista IMO), but if you're not interested in, you know, buying a copy of it Vista will probably be just fine for you. As others said, if you actually want to use all of your RAM you'll need 64 bit Vista or 7 to do so. On the other hand, you may not really need all that memory available for your planned uses.

This. Don't buy 7 if you have a perfectly good copy of Vista sitting there. 7's better, sure, but not worth the money unless you're getting a killer deal on it.

EDIT: And yes, 99% of the problems that led to "lolVista" back in the day have been fixed. It's a perfectly decent OS, and there's nearly* zero reason to choose XP over it.


* - Unless you have one of the few programs with compatibility issues. Which you almost certainly don't.

i have no software needs for windows except for web browsers and.. i dunno.. Peggle.
But you did make me wonder if i have a 32 or 64 bit version.. Can you run 32bit on a 64bit system?

so a lot of people are still hating vista, but it's just that i have a licenced disk lying around.

LaCabra

Yeah, you can run 32-bit on a 64-bit system, but you should use 64 if you have it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Vista other than that 7 is better. It beats the hell out of XP unless you're running some old incompatible software (in which case the same thing probably applies to 7)

kitch

Avoid XP simply because of the security downfalls.

Zython

I have Vista on my Mac. Works fine for the most part.

Fagatron

I bought Seven this way:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116758&cm_re=Seven_Professional_OEM-_-32-116-758-_-Product

It's not really a huge expense unless you're strapped for cash. Worth it to me not to have to clean up Vista's registry every time it doesn't feel like behaving.

mcdermott

Fagatron wrote: »

I bought Seven this way:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116758&cm_re=Seven_Professional_OEM-_-32-116-758-_-Product

It's not really a huge expense unless you're strapped for cash. Worth it to me not to have to clean up Vista's registry every time it doesn't feel like behaving.

Is there any particular reason you'd recommend that over a Home Premium Upgrade version? I doubt he needs any of the features of Professional, and if he already has an unused Vista license (or even an XP license) he's eligible for the Upgrade version. It's only $30 saved, sure, but it also spares him some of the OEM restrictions as well (traded for the Upgrade restrictions, obviously, but XP licenses grow on trees).

Or you can get the Home Premium OEM version for $99, if the OEM route works best. Take a hard look at Professional versus Home Premium, featurewise...most people can get away with the latter.

Fagatron

Heurgh.

My bad, I was just pointing out that the OEM licenses are a lot cheaper than the retail versions, and even though they SAY they're not transferable I've never known anyone who had any problems calling them up and telling them the switched the motherboard in the computer or whatever to get them to switch the license over.

The only thing I can think of is the XP Compatability Mode if that's a thing for him.