Windows on Mac Performance, Part 2

I have a little more information as a followup from the last post about VMWare vs. Parallels vs. Apple Boot Camp. This time, I looked briefly at CPU and memory footprints at idle. VMWare is easy on the CPU at idle, using only 0-10% CPU. But it is very hungry for memory. 1,630MB resident and a total of over 2,300MB of virtual memory across all processes. Wow! It was configured to allocate 1,500MB RAM for Windows. You can see details below… (click for a bigger view)

In contrast, Parallels used a whopping 25-30% of the CPU at idle but far less memory. It was also configured to allocate 1,500MB RAM for Windows.

Windows on Mac Performance, Parallels vs. VMWare vs. Boot Camp

Over the holiday, I played around with three Windows on Mac solutions mostly to find the best environment to run a multi-player game. But it lead me to benchmarking Parallels, VMWare and Apple’s Boot Camp. I decided a Windows on Mac performance showdown was in order. The results were surprising.

Parallels has been running on my Macbook Pro for a while. But I have been a little unhappy with its performance. I have had some frustrating pauses and general sluggishness. I had read that VMWare is a nice solution. Boot Camp always seemed like the best way to get performance and true compatibility for running Windows XP on a Macbook Pro. With Boot Camp, Mac OS X doesn’t even run. You boot directly to Windows.

Method

I found a copy of Boot Camp 1.4b, downloaded the latest VMWare beta v1.1, and tested with Parallels v2 and v3. I installed a fresh copy of Windows XP using each. Next, I stripped out all the junk that gets installed along with Windows, shut down unneeded Windows services, and installed some benchmarking software. I found Performance Test 6.1 by PassMark. It seems pretty decent and has a free trial. I configured each instance of Windows XP as similar as possible; same screen resolution, color depth, and memory. I didn’t have an option to reduce memory for Boot Camp so it had the full 3GB of RAM that is installed on my machine. I ran the benchmark three times on each instance and used the best result from each in the graph below.

Results

As you can see in the graph, Parallels is the winner. This was a big surprise to me. Given my experience with Parallels, I expected it to be the loser. I also expected Boot Camp to win because it doesn’t need to have Mac OS X running underneath it. I can’t explain why Boot Camp wouldn’t win in every category but it didn’t. Does anyone know?

Here are the results … higher numbers are better … click on it for a better view.

As you can see, Parallels v3 is a clear winner in almost every category. I triple checked the disk performance in Parallels 3 and found the result is correct. Parallels seems to do a very good job of caching for this particular benchmark.

Unfortunately, performance of 3D graphics is dismal in both Parallels 3 and Boot Camp. I can tell I won’t have a good experience with Call of Duty 4.

Wine From a Box – Not Bad

I am not a wine snob but I can barely drink the average $10 bottle any more. Most of the reasonably priced Merlots and Cabernets are just too harsh. But last week, I discovered I like even cheaper wine more. The Black Box Merlot costs $25 and is equavalent to four 750ml bottles of wine. I bought it on a whim at Safeway because of the bag, not the box. You see, the wine is stored in a bag. As you drink it, the bag shrinks around the wine and leaves no space for air. I drink one glass a day and bottles are usually starting to turn bad by my last glass. Not so with the bag-in-the-box. I have been drinking it for almost two weeks and it still tastes perfectly good.

The wine is not too strong for my taste and is a good every day wine. It exhibits aromas of leathery plums and cinnamon-spiced oak…just kidding. Let’s just say it is a great wine for the price.  If I were to serve it to guests, I would put it into a decanter and they would never guess it came in a box.

Five Months with a Mac

This is a follow up to a few posts I made in Dec about switching to a Mac. I believe I have enough experience now to give a different perspective than I could then. My primary machine has been this Macbook Pro for five months. I can’t say I haven’t looked back because I have. There are some things I like about the Mac and some things I like better about Windows. When I compare to Windows, I am referring to Windows XP. I have not tried Windows Vista yet.

Do I recommend a Mac over Windows?

A lot of people have asked me if I recommend switching to a Mac over Windows. My answer is “it depends“.

If you are a developer or UI designer, “yes“. But even this needs some qualification. I recommend Mac’s for web developers. They can take full advantage of BSD Linux under the covers on a Mac. That is sweet! Web developers can also run Windows within Parallels to test with IE. Running Windows in Parallels is good but not really the same as having a dedicated machine running windows only.

If you are a novice user at home, yes, I would recommend Mac because it is a bit of a smoother experience overall. Applications on the Mac have a very consistent look and feel where Windows is more random. On the other hand, you will have more trouble finding help from someone if you need it … and you will need as much help with the Mac as Windows. With the number of times I have to kill run-away processes or fix some weird hardware problem, I am surprised most people are able to Mac or Windows themselves.

If you have a non-technical job in an Enterprise, “no“, stick with Windows. You are probably using MS Office and Outlook. These are Microsoft products and and they work much better on Windows than Mac. Outlook doesn’t exist on the Mac so you will either have to use Entourage for Calendar and Email or separate programs for each on a Mac. Entourage is NOT a good calendaring program. Outlook wins hands down for Calendar and is a good email client too.

Reliability is no better than Windows. I think I have been around too many people who just love Apple products because of the brand image. I had been lead to believe Macs are more reliable and better in every way than Windows. In my experience, they are about the same and maybe a little worse in reliability. Consumer Reports recently ranked Apple laptops below Sony, IBM, Compaq, Dell, and Toshiba in repair history. But Apple did have the fewest repairs of all leading Desktop manufacturers. Both Apple laptops and desktops are twice as expensive as the Windows equivalents in this same report.

Usability is a little better. OK I haven’t done a scientific study on this. Mac may be earier to learn for a novice because it is more consistent across applications. There are some aspects of the Mac that drive me nuts. Heavy editing is a pain on my Macbook Pro compared to my Dell laptop. The keyboard (hardware) and the key combinations (software) are both cumbersome. Sometimes I start typing and realize I have been modifying a window underneath the one I am looking at.

Hardware and peripherals work much better on a Mac .. until you try to print. Camera, mice, bluetooth, and wifi all work perfectly on the Mac. Bluetooth is almost unusable on Windows. It actually works pretty well on my Mac. I can connect to my phone and sync my address book. Unfortunately, I can’t sync pictures or copy them from my phone as I can on Windows. But it did take me close to a day to figure this out on Windows. Printing is a different story. Finding drivers for your old printer might not be possible. Printing to a network printer can be a pain to set up.

In conclusion, I like my Mac mostly for the brilliant hardware. I also like it as a developer for all it’s flexibility. But I don’t like it as a member of a MS Exchange based enterprise. Am I going to switch back to Windows? Not any time soon. But if my mac was lost or stolen, I would have a hard time deciding if I should get another one.

I Curse HP Printers

I have always bought HP printers.  I will not buy another one.  Why?  The HP software sucks so bad that it ruins the printer.  To begin with, you have to be very careful when you insert that HP CD after you buy a printer.  It will install all kinds of crapware on your PC.  You typically have to do this in order to get the drivers for your HP printer.  But then these drivers suck too.  I have a big problem on my home PC, normally used by my wife, with the print queue getting jammed.  A job gets stuck and can’t be deleted.  Nothing else can print because of a stuck job in the queue.  I usually stop and restart the Windows print spooler.  How many people know how to do that?  But this week, that solution didn’t even work.  Why? Only HP knows and they aren’t telling me.  After some googling, I found a solution here.  This solution helped me.  I turned it into a .bat file so I don’t have to struggle with this problem any more.  But I know the real solution is to buy another brand.

You might ask why I don’t update the HP Printer drivers?  Maybe they have a new one on their web site.  Yeah, right.  Their “basic” download, which they actually call basic, is over 43MB!!!  I can imagine all the crapware in that.

So I curse you HP and your crappy software because of all the time I’ve spent working on print problems.  I am fortunate I know how to start and stop a print spooler and delete files deep in the \Windows directory.  How other people deal with this, I’ll never know.

Switching to a Mac – Day 13

I am completely switched over now. Using Windows seems a little odd because to automatically go to the wrong side of the window to close and minimize. Overall, I am happier with the MacBook Pro than my clunky Dell laptop.  The rest of this post is boring.  Click here for some good entertainment.

The Good

Nice clean look and feel.

Installing Apps. More simple that I had imagined. Uninstall by dragging out of the Applications folder.

Consistant UI across Apps. Although editing key combinations are not always consistant.

Apple Mighty Mouse. This is a brilliant mouse. It appears simple but is actually has right click, left click, center click, and side click. The little ball in the middle is the scroll wheel for horizontal and vertical. This mouse takes a lot of pain out of window navigation once you get used to it.

Dashboard. Similar to Yahoo or Google widgets. But it is nicely integrated with Mac OS X and is one click away with the Mighty Mouse.

Networking is easy. This just shows me how painful it is in Windows.
Spotlight indexes everything and makes it easy to find.

BSD Unix under the covers.

The Bad

The Finder. This app is core to OS X. It is like the Windows Start menu and file Explorer wrapped into one. But it is not good at either managing files or Applications. I hope to find a replacement for Finder soon.

MacBook Pro keyboard. It feels cheap. The arrow keys are way too small. It is missing Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, and the Windows style delete key. If you do a lot of typing, these are all important keys that make one more efficient.

Apple Full Keyboard. This keyboard does have all the keys the MacBook is missing. But they don’t all work out of the box!

No single button to exit an app. I often find I have several apps running that I thought I had shut down. When you close a window, the app keeps running. You have to use Apple-Q or the File menu to exit.

Applications. Choices are limited compared to windows so you might not find what you want. I tend to use a lot of free apps for misc tasks such as recording my linerider video, replacing the Finder, and so on. The major apps such as Firefox and Thunderbird are almost identical to the Windows versions but a bit buggier and less polished.

The Departed – See it!

LeeAnne and I saw The Departed last night.  It is a remake of a Hong Kong crime thiller called Infernal Affairs.  We saw original on DVD a while back and liked it a lot.  The Departed is better.  In fact, it is the best movie I’ve seen in 2006.  It was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and others.  DiCaprio deserves an Oscar for his performance.  The movie is very funny, has a lot of action and violence, intrigue, suspense, and some shocking moments.   Go see it before it it leaves the theaters.  You will love it.

Adium Instant Messenger Client Review

I’ve been using Adium for a few days to get a feel for the client. I can recommend it to anyone using a Mac for general purpose IM. It is a very good general purpose IM client but is missing some key features that keep it from being a great AIM client.

I have used many IM clients on Windows but have only iChat to compare it to on the Mac. Adium beats iChat by a mile. Adium is a multi-headed client. It’s strength is the ability to customize the look of the IM form and buddy list. I’ve never seen so many customization options in one client. This is only a sample of the options:

• Set where mini buddy icons and status go on the buddy list; left, right, far left, and so on.
• Set size of mini icons with a slider control. I’ll bet people use this.
• Control spacing on buddy list from left margin, right margin, vertical between buddies, and more.
• Colors and style of buddy list and IM windows are highly customizable.
• You can see screenshots here.

Many of the settings are not needed and add to the complexity. A good example is left, center, and right justification of buddies and group names. But I did play with each setting to get the look I wanted. For a while it looked like this:

But I am a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to buddy list. After trying several styles, it ended up being pretty close to the default settings. This is what it looks like now:

This should give you an idea for how flexible this client can be.
Adium has a very good status (away) message management and controls. You can even set online status messages. Put your mouse over the buddy name to see your buddy’s status. There are several ways to choose status messages; on the task bar and on the buddy list. Only praises here.

Plugins, skins, sound sets, and more are available on the Adium web site. Again, customizing the experience is Adium’s strength.

Adium is missing a few features that I consider mandatory. My buddy list is approaching 400 buddies. Aside from knowing who all those people are, finding them is on my buddy list is the next challenge. Adium has no buddy list search ability as we have in Light AIM and AIM 6.0. I have resorted to openening and closing groups to find someone. It is a hassle I can do without.

The second critical missing feature is the Buddy Update indicator. The update indicator is an obsession I miss dearly. It tells me when there my buddy has shared some content with me.

Many people will miss the ability to set their AIM Buddy Info.

Overall, Adium is a highly customizable and very usable IM client. It may be overly complex for the mass market but great for those who want a particular look, a multi-headed client, and don’t miss special features of AIM. AIM 6.0 for Windows is the best AIM client by a wide margin. After using AIM 6 for a while, everything else feels a bit clunky. But Adium may be the best there is for Mac users.

Stay tuned for my next adventure in Macland will be installing Parallels and Windows XP. This may sound like heresy to Mac users but it will give me the ability to run the best AIM client available.

Looking for a GPS? Look no farther than your pocket.

With Christmas coming on, I had the idea that I could ask for a nice GPS to use in my car. My wife LeeAnne suggested I pick one out myself because I can be a bit picky when it comes to gadgets. So in my typical way, I set off to learn everything there is to know about the devices.

I read about and tried a lot of units. To my surprise, I decided to go with the Verizon Navigator GPS product which works on my phone, a RAZR. I compared it to the Acura MDX factory Navigation and, thanks to a loan from Nic, a Garmin StreetPilot 2620. I also compared the directions of all of these against Mapquest and Yahoo Maps.

I have a lot of experience with the Acura GPS since LeeAnne has one in her MDX. It has some flaws such as a confusing POI (point of interest) database but overall, it is really nice. For a portable unit, I was looking for…

• First and foremost: good directions
• Form factor. I want something small that won’t get in the way on the dashboard of my car. I also want to be able to take it on trips and that means it should be fairly flat like the very nice Garmin Nuvi.
• Next is cost. Not more than $350. There are a lot of nice units in that price range.
• Next are features such as speaking street names, “follow me” maps and good POI search.

So here’s what I found.

According to my research here, Navteq is the best map solution for the US. If having good directions is a priority, you need Navteq maps. Garmin, Magellan, and our Acura use Navteq.

Overall, Garmin has the best portable and in car solutions. Their routing is very good and ease of use is top notch. If money were no object, I would get the Garmin Nuvi 660.

The Garmin 2620 was state of the art for consumer GPS a year or two ago. This is a very powerful and highly customizable unit. A little larger than I like so it would be a bear to take in carry-on baggage. I believe the power cord is permanently attached so I wouldn’t be able use an AC cord, cut the end off and hard-wire it to the power in my car. The speaker is built into the power cord.

The 2620 compares well to the Acura GPS. Of course it is hard to beat the convenience of a built in unit for voice over the internal stereo, large screen, built in buttons, and so on. But the 2620 is very fast to calculate routes and gave similar directions.

When it came to calculating accurate directions, only the Verizon Navigator worked as I expected. I compared five routes that I travel on a regular basis. Verizon got all five perfect! All others sent me five minutes or more farther. It has incredible features for a phone based GPS. It has live updating maps (follow-me), speaks street names and the best POI search of any I tried.

The Verizon service costs $3 per day or $10 per month. There are some advantages of a service like this that you may not realize unless you own a GPS. One of them is map updates. The Verizon maps are updated on their servers. They already have changes to Rt 28. It seems to take Navteq years to make these updates and you have to pay a lot of $$ for them. It cost us $200 to update our Acura GPS last year and it still didn’t have 3 year old changes to some major highways.

Until the Garmin Nuvi 660 reaches my price range, I’ll stick with my RAZR.