Review of Windows 7 beta in a Virtual Machine 3
I’m a Mac fanboy. I really don’t like windows all that much – I’ll tell you that up front. But, I have to be fair, and try things – right? Plus, I needed a VM of Windows to run an app for a little while, and this was the quickest (and free-est) way to do it.
So…
In case anyone’s wanting to try – I downloaded Sun’s VirtualBox (free VM) from VirtualBox (http://virtalbox.org), installed it (nothing special) on my MacBook Pro 2.4GHz w/ 4GB Ram/Leopard.
I then downloaded the Windows 7 Beta (here), made a DVD from .ISO (found out that step was not necessary, as Sun’s VirtualBox allows you to install from iso files, not just physical media), and installed it.
So Far, it runs without any glitches or crashes. Network (emulates a gigabit connection, even though my macbook is connected via WiFi (n), Audio (emulates AC-97 or SB-16 through CoreAudio), un-accelerated video (128mb – there’s a checkbox for “enable 3D acceleration”, but W7 doesn’t seem to see it). I created a 1GB Ram VM (minimum) which stresses the 4gb I have in the MBP – with other apps and browsers running.
A few niceties in Win7 – WordPad can now easily replace Word for most people, MS Paint and Calculator have been revamped. There is NO Mail client. Almost Dock like Taskbar (not there yet boys…maybe in Windows 10, once Mac OS has evolved to the next best thing…). Search still remains in the start menu, or whatever it’s called now, as it did in Vista. There is no “run” command that is directly attached to the start menu that I could see – but a quick search, and it’s there.
It connected to my AirDisk (ext drive on Airport Extreme base station) via Samba. New Homegroups and networking seems like a pain – way too simplified to the point that it confused me – I don’t like it at all. My first stab at IE 8 – nothing new jumped at me from 7 (other than supposed better standards compliance, which I didn’t test). Ctrl-L in the browser is still a stupid behavior.
That’s all that I’ve tested so far – I’ll keep you posted on other things as they pop-up or crash. It’s hard to properly judge performance through a VM – but it did seem to be OK with the little stuff I was throwing at it, given the ram. AERO was disabled, due to the video card issue.
