Cheese Louise! Windows is slow!

[struggle4progress]

I will need Windows for one (1) program, so installed with Boot Camp on an extra internal HD. That took hours. First, Boot Camp has a bad tendency to cause kernel panics that require one to repair the start-up drive from the OS X installation disk in order to recover. Finally figured out (thanks to an aimless wander through the Internet tubes) that Boot Camp does not like big partitions for the Windows stuff, so reduced the size of the partition I asked Boot Camp to make for Windows. OK, no more kernel panics. But Windows doesn't install quickly -- and after installing, you still have to load extra drivers from the OS X installation disk so the keyboard works etc -- and since this is before the frickin keys work, the optical drive has to be encouraged by hand to close so it can read the new drivers. Finally got all that done. The installation is incredibly slow to boot and slow to shutdown. Thought I'd try a few standard things: one download, a tiny bit of browsing, just to see what happened: slow! slow! slow!

[Deja Q]

1. I bought VMWare Fusion. Not as fast as a boot camp scenario, but it's well integrated into OS X...

And by far faster than other emulation methods... and runs far more than Crossover Mac (which I also use, which works for some apps...)

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

For vmware, I bought this and ran it. Does a GREAT job of whittling away needless fluff; I got XP down below 90MB RAM.

I do prefer WINE/Crossover Mac when possible (it will run Win32 API-based apps at virtually native speeds but isn't compatible with all WIndows software), but that can't always be done...