MacBook Pro running Windows Vista 64 bit

Question

I have a business requirement to run Windows on my Mac. I have one of the new MacBook Pro's 5.1 with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz and glass trackpad. My question is should I buy the 32bit or 64 bit package? I need to run MS Office, specifically Access, and my version is Office 2003. I'd prefer Vista rather than XP only because I've used it previously and it more resembles the Mac OS than XP's desktop. I know that Windows 7 is around the corner but I've got to run with what's available. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks Barry

Answer 1

True, Windows 32-bit, if run natively (ie. not in a virtual machine, in which case the whole 4GB isn't available anyway) will not see even the entire available 4GB. But it's a moot point. Even if running Vista 64-bit, MS Office is a 32-bit application - it is already RAM limited to 32-bit address space, regardless of what the OS is capable of. Sometime next year, MS may start shipping a 64-bit version of Office, but then again, when was the last time MS actually met a proposed shipping date with any product?
As I said, to take advantage of 64-bit computing, you need 3 things - more then 4GB of RAM, a 64-bit OS, AND 64-bit applications.
Barry - as to how you want to run it the main thing is do you need or want access to your OS desktop or files at the same time as running Windows? If you do then a virtual machine makes sense. I run VMWare Fusion on my work Mac Pro (which has 10GB of RAM) and have both XP 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines. I simple run my virtual machine in one Spaces desktop, and have 3 other Spaces desktops for my OS X applications. From the Windows virtual machine, I can drag and drop files to and from my shared OS X folders.
If you don't care about simultaneous sharing of resources, then from a performance perspective, it makes more sense to use bootcamp and run Windows natively (since booting to windows will always give better performance then a virtual machine).
If you go the virtual machine route, and are eligible for the education discount, then I would order VMWare Fusion from Apple (actually, once your order is processed, you just get a download account for the VMWare web site, so you actually get near-immediate access to your product).