MacMall selling Macs w/WinXP pre-installed

Well, I'm only posting this for the other computer geeks (everyone?) at the forum. No judgmentalism here about whether XP belongs on a Mac. Please, please no Mac/Win war stuff.

I just found it shocking & irresponsible that a large mail order site would sell a beta-level approach to dual-booting as a pre-install.

Heck, there's currently no way to get all the devices to be seen properly in Device Manager, which results in some hardware not working right at all. ("Why's my audio output port constantly glowing bright red like a flashlight?" "Why won't my computer stay in standby?" etc.) And who's going to answer those questions? Hmmmm.

I've helped one client of my own load BootCamp on their iMac to give them a QuickBooks Pro on XP solution, but it has come with a BIG caveat explanation and required their acceptance of it all. That's an exception, though and nobody's going to read a disclaimer down at the bottom of some "details" link from the MacMall's selling page.

Eww... what's the point of buying a Mac if you're going to put Windows on it?

No-- Please let's stick to the vendor selling beta kinda thing! Please? I kinda want to keep the thread open & hear out if I'm just way off base on this.

Maybe I need to explain what I mean. The whole point of buying a Mac and paying the premium, IMHO, is for the entire user experience, from opening the carefully designed packing, to the hardware with seamless software integration, as well as the customer service from the Genius Bar available at any Apple Store. I have nothing against Windows... but I don't see the point of buying a Mac and going ahead to run Windows on it. In fact, when I want to run Windows or Linux, you can bet I'll be using an x86 to do it.

Now the whole deal with Boot Camp, I'm not sure I understand -- Apple's site claims that Boot Camp makes it simple and easy to run Windows XP on a Mac, going so far as to even supply drivers for Windows and a bootloader to switch between the two... but the driver support isn't quite finished yet? I don't think the guys at MacMall completely thought this out yet...

I didn't RTFA, but does MacMall use Boot Camp, or their own DIY way?

rumor has it that their next osx.5, leopard, will have the xp pre-installed. hopefully, without re-booting. doubt winblose will have vista by next year, if the european union have their say.

carrot said:

[...] does MacMall use Boot Camp, or their own DIY way?

Click to expand...

Yep -- MacMall's using Apple's beta of BootCamp to do the dual-boot.

BTW, the BootCamp is firmly dual-boot, but there are other ways (also beta's) do run the OS's more simultaneously.

Maybe I'm just way off base or something. I'm still shocked that they'd sell the Macs that way because the user is guaranteed to have at least the known problems with it from the moment they start it up which at this time are still pretty serious, especially for the laptops. Like the laptop won't stay in "standby" mode. It just won't, so an ignorant user would fold down the top, maybe even wait for the LED to show that it's in standby, put the laptop into their backpack and arrive at their destination with a DOA laptop because their battery died, or worse their hard drive had a head crash as it was flung around and running.

I guess that from the MacMall side I could imagine the "people are asking for it" response. Okay, but they're not being very clear about the really bad dangers of using the Mac that way.

It just seems to me that if a customer isn't geeky enough to install the dual-boot themselves (which in this case is really simple) then wow they sure won't be geeky enough to self-support the machine while parts of it aren't working right. And it's a given that it doesn't work right.

My local Mac store has boot camp installed on a MacMini. The 2 partitions cannot see each other which makes file transfer difficult.

I was hoping to movie capture on iMovie, shoot over to Adobe Video Suite on XP for massaging then bring it back to iDVD to make a playable copy. No go.

Meanwhile I am stuck eunning Adobe Premiere and Photoshop on YE OLDE SYSTEM 8.6!
(My copies of Premiere won't run on OS9 let alone OSX).

Imagine my difficulty logging onto the internet.

I hope a working version of SoftPC will still be available when my CPP** kicks in and I have the financial ability to get a new computer.

**CPP - Canada Pension Plan

carrot said:

Eww... what's the point of buying a Mac if you're going to put Windows on it?

Click to expand...

My old thoughts until I needed to load maps onto a Magellan-no Mac support.

It does seem foolish to sell with such buggy software. That will definately turn off converts to Mac if they think they have just bought a system that will run programs and devices from windows, i.e. autocad stuff and most GPS support programs-I know, I know there are GPS solutions for Mac but most of the software for direct support of a device--Magellan and TomTom--are windows only

GPS is what I'm currently using my XP partition for also. I've got Alk's CoPilot loaded and it works at least as buggy (Mac won't come out of standby when GPS dongle attached) as it is on my Dell D800 laptop (which also won't come out of standby if the GPS dongle is attached) but still generally works great. The GPS goddess guides me with her calming voice to where I need to drive, and she runs fine on the MacBook Pro, just very very hot.

LEDNinja -- You can get files back & forth from the partitions. If you format the WinXP partition FAT32 you can read&write with that while you're booted in OS X. (an NTFS format only allows you to read when booted in OSX) With FAT32 it's drag & drop simplicity. There must also be a way to view the OS X partition from when you're booted in Windows but I don't know one. Whether that exists or not, the solution you're wanting is already there, theoretically anyway.
*** I haven't tried this and if you want to then you gotta understand the much-more-than-usual danger of file corruption/loss ***
Here's what I'm thinking might work: When booted in OSX drag the file to the XP partition, then reboot to XP. Do the photoshopping in XP, save & reboot to OSX. Then drag the files back to your OSX partition or just work on them in the XP.
Of course, if you happen to have a USB flash drive handy then this technique doesn't really save you much effort. You could always use that to get the files from one part'n to another.

Ouch. Reboot, reboot, reboot? I'd prefer to be working between two computers at that point. What I want to see is a way to run OSX and Vista concurrently, and share files seamlessly. (Better integrated VMware?) Then I'd think of a Mac being able to run Windows as a viable solution.

carrot said:

Ouch. Reboot, reboot, reboot? I'd prefer to be working between two computers at that point. What I want to see is a way to run OSX and Vista concurrently, and share files seamlessly. (Better integrated VMware?) Then I'd think of a Mac being able to run Windows as a viable solution.

Click to expand...

Ya the reboot truly is a pain. That'll get worked out soon enough, and there's beta of VMware already. (I haven't tried it) It's all beta. Being able to dual-boot does mean that I don't always need to lug around another 7 lbs in my bag to support the Windows platform. Everybody's expecting Apple to do VM with the dual-OS thing.

(off-topic) I wonder what MS is going to come out with. I mean, beyond Vista they usually have some really clever way to maintain command of the hardware. It's fun to watch the competitiveness, though MS hasn't really done anything at all since Bill got married. Maybe they'll just sit back at the MS headquarters & laugh at Mr 5% Market-share that it's a very long way and many more downs from 5 to even the 50% yard line. Heck it's even a long way to the 10%. Who knows what'll happen.
I've said too much off topic. I'll apologize and let the thread head into obscurity now...

I believe that VMWare has said that they are developing an Intel OS X VMWare, so that will do the trick.

I don't know if Virtual PC will be retooled to work on the x86 Macs.

There's also speculation that Apple isn't near done working on OS virtualization support within OS X itself, and that Boot Camp is merely a first step.

Me, I'll be happy if I can run FreeBSD alongside OS X, with the occasional foray into Windows for the 1 or 2 times a year I need it.

Nah, it's brilliant. People that have one or 2 windows apps that they are afraid to live without but want to buy a Mac can do that now. Get a mac, boot it once a week into windows to use your quickbooks pro or whatever else you haven't bothered to look up a Mac version of. Let your nephew boot into windows to play duke nukem 3004 and not worry about it hosing up your Mac partition.

Then, when they get tired of booting into windows to do that stuff, let them start looking for the Mac solutions to the same problems, which are there in all but a few of the most specialized cases.

Therefore, the windows users that would like a mac can have one without having to repurchase or upgrade all their software at once. Make no mistake, apple is a hardware company, there will be no macos for generic windows machines.

As far as MacMall selling the thing preloaded now, I agree with Binky. At this point it's irresponsible. but might work to sell them a few more machines, who knows.