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General discussion

A Mac Laptop with Windows on an External hard-drive

Nov 25, 2007 4:20AM PST

I have an Ibook G4:
1.2 GHZ PowerPC G4
768 MB DDR SDRAM (upgraded)

I about to purchase an external hard-drive for my laptop and was wondering if I could run Windows on it.

For some of you, this would be an easy question but if I ran Leopard 10.5 on my Ibook, then Windows XP
Professional on the external hard-drive, and be able to reboot using Windows on the external on my Ibook?

Thanks

Discussion is locked

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Boot Camp requires that XP
Nov 25, 2007 4:44AM PST

is installed on the internal, and partitioned, HS.

P

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A long standing issue with Windows is...
Nov 25, 2007 6:11AM PST

As it comes from Microsoft it does not run from Firewire, USB drives. Yes I can run it from SCSI, IDE, SATA but little else.

Bob

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Thanks for the help, but...
Nov 25, 2007 9:01AM PST

...Would there be any other way to setup a situation like this one without Boot Camp?

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The other options are ...
Nov 25, 2007 10:45AM PST
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Again, Thanks
Nov 26, 2007 7:15AM PST

Alright those seem like great solutions, and I actually have Parallels, but my macs weak specs arent enough Sad. ill just have to stick with just mac. Oh well, its far better than windows Wink

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I got a chance to use Parallels on a low end Mac.
Nov 26, 2007 9:26AM PST

Try the Mac Mini with 1G RAM. I was very surprised how well it ran.

If you get a chance to play with it at the Apple store, try it.

Bob

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If you ever got Windows XP to run on that thing,
Nov 27, 2007 2:15AM PST

without using an emulator, I'd be very impressed.

->Windows XP was not written for the PowerPC architecture.

Running it on a PPC machine in an emulator that is exchanging PPC code for Intel code will be slow. Very slow, even on a higher end G4 or G5. As Bob suggested, you'd get much better performance out of a low end Intel Mac, such as the Mini, because Windows can run "natively" on these Macs.

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Slow down...
Nov 27, 2007 2:18AM PST

Windows NT 4.0 was written to run on PowerPC (and did.) Windows 2000 was based on NT 4.0. XP was based on 2000 so there is a lot of bits that would run just fine. But there is no pre-eminent powerpc platform with millions of machines so there is no reason for this to ever happen again (as it did in NT 4.0 days.)

Bob

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Very true,
Nov 27, 2007 2:36AM PST

and I'm fully aware of NT 4.0's ability to run on PPC platforms.

However, hardly anyone runs the NT 4.0 anymore, and you don't exactly hear of people putting in a 2000 or XP disc into a Mac and it working. So while it may be hypothetically possible (and I'm not doubting that), fundamentally speaking it's not realistic, as most people aren't willing to venture into it.

Catch my drift...?

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Exactly.
Nov 27, 2007 3:12AM PST

As to NT 4... It lives on as a server at the office and a few too many other places. So much so that any decent IT staffer should have some skills in NT and Novell 4.0.

Bob

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Ooops, I missed the G4 reference.
Nov 27, 2007 11:23PM PST

VirtualPC, from MS, has been discontinued but can still be found.

Unfortunately it emulates a PII running at 600Mhz, no matter what processor you have in your Mac.

Slow is NOT the word for it.

P

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That's interesting.
Nov 27, 2007 11:38PM PST

Are Microsoft not friends with Apple anymore? First they dump IE, then VPC, and, Office, well, it went to hell ages ago.

Apple are even being generous by porting their software to Windows...

And I never knew Pentium II ever got up to 600MHz.

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that could be an III
Nov 28, 2007 1:02AM PST

Either way, it's slow

P

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For some, plenty fast.
Nov 28, 2007 1:06AM PST

Remember I come from a time where we used 386 20MHz machines and did just fine design electronics, writing code and more. That 600MHz would be just fine for running those old apps.

Bob

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Just for giggles,
Nov 28, 2007 8:43AM PST

I fired up my old SE/30 this weekend and it sprang into life at a raging 16Mhz.
System 6.5 took all of 30 seconds to boot.
Those were the days, Aldus Desktop Publishing, Hypercard stacks, BBS's, MS Word on a floppy and a 9" 1 bit B/W screen.

Oh those lazy halcyon days of yore! How soon we forget.

P

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Small world. Dad had the SE/30 and...
Nov 28, 2007 11:05AM PST

It was da'bomb for those days...