MacBook Air - Oh What to VMware

OK, I have to admit that this post is a bit of a hesitation. I wrote a while ago about my not so pleasant experiences with Parallels and the MacBook Air...see MacBook Air, Parallels...I hear that not only is Parallels running better, but they have a version specifically for the Air. I hear that, but will not try it at this point.

I have installed VMware Fusion the Beta 2 version on the Air about 1 month ago...and, even after one complete update, it is still performing extremely well...now that I write this, it will, of course, stop working and revert to more corrupted state...kidding. Even if it did, I have two back-ups of previous working versions that I can just copy over...

I ended up completely removing the Bootcamp install as it was taking up more space than I wanted to afford...After removing Bootcamp, I still had the challenge of reinstalling XP yet an additional time. It seemed easier this time. There were actually only a couple of updates needed before the wonderful Windows XP SP3 initiated itself. It was much easier installing the 196+ updates when they were a part of a service pack than the individual ones were. Everything went in...with only a couple of hours lost instead of numerous weekends and more harddrive space.

Microsoft Office 2003 went in with no challenges. There were more updates for office than expected. Since I wasn't using it within the XP install as much, I let them go in over the next week. Windows Live components such as Messenger, Writer, and the lot installed quickly. Live OneCare was the only program that provided any challenges being installed. As it turns out, it was the slipstream version of XP I decided to use for this install. It did not activate Terminal Services which OneCare needed. After making some minor registry changes, all is well.

With this install of VMware Fusion and Windows XP, I was also able to attach to Windows Live, pull down items from my Skydrive, and add the MacBook Air to Windows Live Mesh. I can access the folders in the cloud whenever I am connected, and simply drag them to the Mac desktop. I am also able to connect seamlessly with the NAT bridge to my office's VPN and the shared corporate folders, dragging and dropping files when needed.

Civilization III and Railroad Tycoon II run fairly smoothly on this installation that runs in its own space on the MacBook Air. When I want to really multi-task, I attach an external monitor and run XP there with 1 GB and OSX with 1GB using the Air's beautiful screen. There are moments when MobileMe decides to sync and the VMware Fusion install slows down, but it is not as annoying or as painful as a crash or restart. The only challenge I have noticed is a longer than expected boot and shut down process, but I was noticing that with a previous XP machine after the SP3 update as well.

Lastly, I was so impressed with the beta that is free until October or so, I purchased a license within a couple of weeks. The upgrade to this version is supposed to be free for those with current license, so this made sense. Good luck...enjoy.

OK, some other items that I thought of after the original posting...

First, the bad pieces...connecting and disconnecting usb devices is not always as simple as plugging it in and unplugging the device when XP is running. Sometimes, you have to tell Vmware that there is something there. Another slightly annoying piece is the fan is constantly running. It is noisy, but too bad. Last item on the negative, unless you are just going to go in and do some quick things in XP, plug in the Air. It sucks up battery life quicker than the MacBook Air usually does.

Second, the better additions...the snapshot and shrinking worked better on the second version of the beta. I don't think I gained much space, but the tool worked well and sped up the load time a little. I have not had any crashes of the operating system...touch wood...when it looks like it is about the crash, it is a system resource issue...which I wish the MacBook Air could accept more memory...Also, two-finger scrolling, right-clicking with the CTRL key, and basic mouse functions from OSX all work splendidly within this environment.

Lastly, the one reason I forgot to mention about moving to even try VMware Fusion was that with the update that Apple provided to BootCamp, I lost some of the mouse functions on the trackpad and the environment kept crashing after that update. While I am sure the makers of VMware Fusion can thank Apple for the additional revenue stream, it is annoying that functionality was impacted by an upgrade...no worries. This method is much better for multi-tasking and balancing workload.

MacBook Air Wrap-Up...For Now

OK, so I have had some great opportunities to use the Air as a standard and daily machine. Instead of separating out items, I decided to wrap up individual topics on the Air at least for now with this post...

* I attended a conference recently where I got tired of taking notes and transcribing them later...So, since the MacBook Air fit into my portfolio, I brought it with me. I used this wonderful tool the entire conference, from 8 AM to 5 PM two days in a row...I turned off wireless and bluetooth for the majority of the day and used mostly MS Word 2004. I only turned on Bluetooth and used Safari during 2 segments of about 10 minutes each on both days. I entered the notes into Word and closed the cover when I was not taking notes. The battery lasted the entire day and all sessions on each day. There were no outlets close, so plugging in was not an option. The battery can last, it just needs limited usage and manual power management of closing the cover when not using it.

* There have been many periods where when logging in or opening an application, especially Microsoft Office 2004 applications, the spinning beach ball lasted for a while. I am still trying to figure out what is causing the beach ball. I am still learning about Leopard, so there may be something in the logs that I am missing.

* For BootCamp, I noticed that when I changed our AirPort Extreme router to N only, I was not able to acquire an IP address. So, I have to use the slower G part of the network. Not too bad, but a pain. I will be playing with the settings further to make sure it is not a simple user error, but for some reason it is not connecting at N speeds...The ironic thing is that when I mixed the network, XP indicated that it was connecting at 130 mbps...interesting...

* A couple of harddrive clicks when shutting down have caused some worry, but all seems to be OK. I have run the diagnostics, checked disk permissions, and Onyx to make sure the drive was working OK. So, far, so good, but the sounds have been few and far in between.

* I believe I will be giving up on the virtual software for now as well. BootCamp will have to do even with the incredibly lower battery life...

* Lastly, the size of the hard drive is still a point of concern...While I am far from running out of space, it decreases everyday with podcasts, pictures, as well as personal and professional documents. About 15 GB remain even after splitting out pictures, movies, and most music files to an external drive.

Still excellent machine that I carry all over the house at ease. We'll see how an upcoming flight works out soon as well.

MacBook Air BootCamp, XP Continued

Having limited space on the XP partition, thought I keep thinking it is enough (12 GB), I was running into challenges when playing simple strategy games such as Civilization and Railroad Tycoon. I got a blue screen which indicated that I should turn off shadowing. After looking this up online, I made sure that the system restore points were turned off. While this may not be a good idea at all when running Windows XP regularly, it does make sense with limited space and a sparse image backup. I figured that if I need to reinstall, I will just copy the image instead of attempting restore. There are very few needed files on this partition, but, it works and the random crashes seemed to have ceased.

One additional item learned during this process is that Windows will go through a chkdsk when it restarts from this crash. Even though the screen indicates that you can bypass this option by pressing a button, the keyboard does not seem to be active. When I plugged in a USB keyboard, I was able to bypass the chdsk. This may appear to be a limitation at times given the one USB port, but a simple USB hub came through again. I am not sure why the laptop keyboard didn't work, but it seems to be one of those things that loads from the Bootcamp items that Apple installs.

MacBook Air, Parallels

OK, OK, I know there are many other people out there who have had great success with Parallels and the MacBook Air...I, however, was not one of them. I installed the trail download and received a 14-day activation key. I already installed BootCamp as shared in a previous storyline, so I was hoping that I would not have to reinstall for Parallels. I held out for this one simple thing for two reasons...one, the drive is only 74 GB formated (80 GB advertised), and 12 GB were spent on the BootCamp partition; two, the time it would take to install the slipstreamed version of XP SP2 and update it in Parallels. I ended up spending more time trying to get the BootCamp partition to work well than I would have trying to install another version. Here were some things that just went too far south...

* The mouse did not work within Parallels the first or second time I launched Parallels.

* The first time I ran Parallels, it actually gave me the mac "blue screen of death"...you know the one that says press and hold down the power button to restart. Not good...not good at all...

* Parallels ended up corrupting my BootCamp partition even after I uninstalled the program from the partition. In fact, when I booted into XP after removing everything, chkdsk ran and found three pages of files that were corrupt and attempted to repair them.

* When I deleted the files on the partition in an attempt to reinstall them from a back-up, there were many locked files. This was probably not a direct Parallels issue. However, the files that remain in my Trash were files that chkdsk left behind from the Parallels install and uninstall. I was able to get the files out of the trash, but they remain on the drive until I can get XP to remove them somehow.

Since I have read so much around the internet about how great the product is, I hesitate to say that Parallels is an terrible product. I would, however, say that it is not for me and I will not be purchasing it. There were things that I may have done incorrectly with the XP install...however, since it is working incredibly well in BootCamp, I am going to go with not so much...If you have this product and it works well, I am happy for you. If you don't have the time to create things properly and use Parallels as a true virtual machine, I would urge you to pause and reconsider. Good luck...enjoy...

MacBook Air BootCamp, XP

I had read some very interesting stories around the internet about installing windows on a Mac...some good...others not so good...However, the reports were pretty consistent in that the Macs were the best hardware on which to run Windows. I needed the functionality for work...given some unique working requirements. So, I took the plunge and installed. Now, on day 3, I can honestly say things are stable...I think...

OK, so here are some lessons I learned during the install:
1) Make sure you have enough room on your BootCamp partition because you can not resize it. I started out with 5 GB. After installing Windows XP SP2 (which was an adventure itself, slipstreaming from a previously purchased CD) and adding the 130+ updates, I was left with only about 1 GB. I had not even installed Office applications or other utilities...Resizing was in my future...However, this is not as simple as resizing an Apple partition, even thought it was formated FAT32...This is what I had to do to resize:

* I had to use Disk Utility to make an image of the exisiting XP drive...this was easy since I chose to format it in FAT32.
* I opened Disk Utility, selected the XP drive, and selected "New Image"...
* I saved the file to an external USB drive.
* Using the BootCamp Assistant, I made the drive one again...this deleted the Windows partition.
* I went back into BootCamp and started over, chosing a little bit larger 12 GB size this time...this seemed about right given the MacBook Air's drive is only 74 GB and was getting quite few.
* Since Apple does not make its partition bootable, you still have to use the SuperDrive to format the drive and copy over the install files.
* When the machine reboots after the formating and before the official install starts, make sure you hold down the "Option" key and launch into the OSX partition.
* After logging in, I deleted everything on the new XP partition.
* I then was able to open the image from the USB drive and copy over everything. I could have used Disk Utility to restore, but this seemed OK.
* I rebooted again, held down the "Option" key and selected the XP partition this time. It worked well. I proceeded to install Office 2003, Windows Live Components, Windows LiveOne Care, Bonjour, iTunes, QuickTime, Java, Acrobat, Flash, and Firefox.

2) Do not use Firefox...OK, kidding here, but it surely caused many problems. I use Firefox on OSX and thoroughly enjoy it. In fact, I was hoping to use my bookmarks interchangeably with the add-ins. However, Firefox decided to crash numerous times and shut down the system. Every time the system shut down, and I launched into XP, it went through chkdsk...this was time-consuming and a pain.

3) Change what happens when Windows crashes. Make sure you prevent Windows from restarting after an error. From what I can tell, besides this latest build of Firefox, this is what caused some errors on the install and chkdsk. To change this:
* I right-clicked on "My Computer"
* Chose the "Advance" tab
* Under, "Startup and Recovery," I chose the "Settings" button
* In the "System Failure" area, I deselected "Automatic Restart"
* Clicked "Apply" and "OK"
Things seem to be well...

4) Tapping on the trackpad does not work to select items. You need to use the click button on the mouse. You can still scroll down web pages with two fingers on the trackpad which is cool, but having grown accustomed to selecting answers with a simple tap, this will take some getting used to...

5) Speaking of getting used to...right clicking without an external mouse is interesting as always, but not too bad...you can put two fingers on the pad and tap the button...which is never the same...

6) The battery life is not as good...well, I can be honest, I did not play with any energy-saving settings. However, I was only getting about 2 hours 30 minutes to 2 hours 45 minutes of battery life using XP...a far cry from the 4 hours + I was getting recently with OSX.

7) Parallels using the BootCamp partiion...well, that is for another post...originally, it crashed my machine and corrupted my partition...I will cover that soon...

I will continue to update progress and usage as I encounter it. I am writing this right now in the XP BootCamp partition of my MacBook Air, so all is good and things are playing nicely...