Buying MacBook Pro - Need Suggestions On Windows 'Emulator'

Hi, as the title suggests, I will be buying a MacBook Pro soon and I'd like to get some suggestions on what type of Windows virtualization/'emulator' (is that the right word?) I should use to play Guild Wars.

So far, I know about CrossOver Mac, Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop for Mac, and VMware. Which of these would be best for playing Guild Wars? Preferably, I'd like to be able to run Windows and Mac at the same time (like with Parallels and VMware), but I heard that there would be certain issues. If so, then perhaps I should use BootCamp or something.

So I'd like to have some suggestions as to which I should use, which ones I should steer clear of, and the advantages/disadvantages to using each of those.


Thanks,
Jonathan

I a 24" Imac and use bootcamp. I was using Crossovergames and getting alright FPS but I get far better performance using bootcamp as everything is running directly in Windows without any interpreters or emulation. If you after performance I would say bootcamp, if not Crossovergames is an option.

Yep bootcamp is a way to go if you want 100% compatibility for windows games. Just make sure that you have XP home or pro with SP2 disc (xp with SP1 disc wont work), or Vista 32 (64 bit wont work).

I have mac pro with nvidia card, easier to update the driver than ATI counterpart.

Ive just tried parallels now, it doesn't run as perfect as you can bootcamp (RAM is still used for mac os running in the background) but more importantly im on a mac mini so the graphics accelerator cannot siphon as much ram to graphical memory resulting in it not meeting graphic requirements (althought a mac book pro you should have plenty of RAM) and bad picture. On the other hand bootcamp runs at 100% of your computers spec just the same as a windows computer of the same stats.

Well, it seems as if most people recommend using Boot Camp. However, that will be kinda troublesome, if I switch to Boot Camp just for Guild Wars...

Has anyone gotten Guild Wars to work near flawlessly on their Mac with a visualization software such as Parallels or VMware?

guild wars is not supported by vmware, and runs badly in parallels. boot camp is by far the best thing to do, as you will have a proper windows installation on your hard drive, allowing you full access to all features.

next best thing would be wine. but unless you are good with X11, i suggest you don't even bother with it, as it is troublesome at the best of times.

so i suggest sticking to boot camp. cos if it aint broke, don't fix it :P

imo it is broke, nobody likes dual booting. Takes way too long, plus you'd have to buy a nasty windows license just to play one game. I'd recommend crossover, since GW isn't that demanding on computers nowadays, so a performance hit isn't too big a deal (at least that's the case with linux, I don't know how well crossover actually works; I'd imagine it's comparable).

So, I'd recommend trying crossover first since you can do that for free, then if that isn't good enough dual booting.

How long on average does it take a MacBook Pro to dual boot to Windows? I don't think it would be long, right?

Well, I had a look at CrossOver and it seems to have a 7-day trial only. After that, and we'll have to pay if we want to continue using it. And provided that Parallels and VMware really can't run Guild Wars properly, I guess I'll have to go to dual booting with Boot Camp...

bootcamp is -not- an emulator
its runnin teh real windows on ur mac
so it will give u better performance than an emulator

and dual-booting does not take long to start up
it takes a while to set-up i guess
but u only have to set it up once...dun be so lazy
the boot-time is pretty much exactly the same

the reason y u'd not want to run bootcamp over an emu
is because an emu, u can run within the mac os environment
so u can play gw on the emu, and easily switch to mac programs at teh same time
u'll even be able to run windows programs and mac programs at the same time
this is of course at the cost of performance

with dual-booting, ur restricted to running windows and windows programs at one time
and running mac and mac programs at one time

so that there is really ur main concern:
whether u want to be able to use windows apps + mac apps at the same time or not

i use boot camp to dual boot for games, takes like a min to reboot, sumtimes less, and crossover for wen i wanna use windows programs that arent games