June 2006 Archives
Finally, my time has come. This weekend I became the proud foster parent of a brand new Intel-based Mac mini. A good friend of mine spent a couple of days with us and we embarked on a little side project. I'll be working on some Java code for him over the next few months and we thought the best way to keep everything self-contained would be to buy a cheap Windows desktop. At the same time he had asked about the new Mac minis and the usefulness of having a Mac around the office for working with graphic designers, etc. I mentioned that the newest Mac minis are capable of dual-booting Mac OS X and Windows XP. He also mentioned that he needed another Windows workstation for one of the workers at his office back in England. At that point the deal was sealed.
So after a bit of attempted haggling over price, the two of us came back to my place with three Mac minis. The plan was to set all of them up with Windows XP and to leave one of them here for me to work on our joint project. In one evening we were able to easily get all three of them dual-booting and completely updated.
Now, although I'm still a bit shocked and impressed at having Windows natively running on this beautiful little oh-so-Apple-styled machine, I have to say that it didn't all come off perfectly.
As soon as we plugged in the first mini we realized that hundreds of MBs of updates would have to be installed prior to enabling the dual boot mechanism. In addition there were two different firmware updates required - both with very different tricks needed for a successful update.
After all required updates were installed, I downloaded and installed Apple's Boot Camp software (beta). This performs the re-partitioning of the hard drive into two partitions (one Windows and one Mac) and sets up the necessary subsystem for dual booting. This part was very straight forward and well thought out. Once Boot Camp was installed and a Windows XP installation disk was inserted, the mini was restarted and the bastardization began.
The rest is all a fairly boring tale of ugly blue DOS-like installation screen for Windows and the typical long-winded and confusing Windows XP installation - with one exception; once the Windows install was complete and the system was booted into Windows XP, I was able to insert a Windows driver CD (kindly burned by Apple's Boot Camp) and install Apple-provided drivers for the mini's special hardware. The driver CD provides updates as well as enabling the built-in Bluetooth capabilities of the mini. WOW!
Overall the process was doable, but not as simple as the average Mac user is accustomed to.
In the end though, the result is pretty astounding. Now I'm going to have to tear myself away from this little beast long enough to get some real work done.
The only real problem we had was one of the minis decided not to boot, at all, straight out of the box. The light was on but no one was home. Our first idea was to take it back to the store the next day, but I took a look at Apple's support site for the mini. Apparently this is a known issue with the mini and firmware updates have been released to fix it. There are also some very detailed instructions on resetting the PRAM and the PMU. These have to be followed EXACTLY for the process to work. Fortunately for us I had a computer-savvy octopus nearby who was able to perform some of the steps, especially the one where we had to plug in the power cord, hold down command, option, X, P, T, A and 3 (all at once), rub the mouse on one of our noses, turn around 5 times and shout "start, please, start." OK, maybe it wasn't that bad - but pretty stinking close.
It will be pretty interesting to see how this dual boot capability and its not-so-easy (or Mac-like) setup is received by those who may be potential "switchers."
Anyone else have similar experiences? I'm curious to know if the process is the same for the Intel-based Mac Books and Mac Book Pros.
Technorati Tags: Apple, bootcamp, dualboot, mac, macmini, macmini, mini, puppy, tech
