VMWare Fusion and XP Pro

January 25th, 2008 | Posted in Computers, Emulation | No Comments »

I had mentioned months ago how I was going to invest some time playing with VMWare Fusion and XP Pro on my Mac. After on an off again trials I have finally come to the conclusion that it is in effect just about pointless.

I cannot install my copy of XP Pro under Bootcamp because it isn’t a SP2 disc and my code is for a pre-SP1 Upgrade. I attempted to roll a SP2 disc but apparently that doesn’t work so well unless your disc is an OEM or Retail Full Install.

The net effect is that in order to run XP on my Mac I have to use VMWare Fusion and while that works rather well there is much left to be desired in performance with games. Homeworld is limited to software rendering only and Sid Meier’s Pirates! crashes. I haven’t really tried many other titles but it really doesn’t matter. I didn’t install Windows to play games; I have a gaming PC for that. I installed Windows to run the one or two rare applications that I need for which no replacement on the Mac exists. Guess what? Four months as a Mac owner and I cannot think of a single program I need to use on Windows that I haven’t replaced with equal or superior alternatives*.

I think I might uninstall Fusion. As it stands now the only thing XP Pro offers me is IE 7 and I’m having a hard time figuring out why I want to waste 20 gigs of hard drive space just to run what could very well be the WORST BROWSER EVER!

The only thing left to do now is buy a nice huge wide-screen LCD for my gaming PC.

So, uhm, yeah.

 

* Superiority is highly subjective. More responsive and useful are sometimes considered superior compared to the leading national brand. Your mileage may very. See sausage for details. Pull tab to release springy apparatus of self annoyance.