The Speed of XP?

[maconlysource]

Yes it installs, but without hardware acc., how useable is it really?

Can it be used viabley as an actual OS? Can you actually run most applications at a decent speed (I am assuming a great deal faster than emulation)?

I realize games are not an option, but it would be nice to have a video showing for eg. the start of explorer... start browsing, the start of apps like office, etc....

Anyone?

[smartin53]

Windows runs perfectly fine and is quite fast. As you noted the only catch is a lack of video drivers so nothing needing proper video will run fast or at all. Office Programs, Graphics Editing (not requiring 3D or 2D Accel), Internet, etc will run just as they would on any normal PC if not better.

[marjetica]

Yesterday night I managed to install XP on MacMini (Core Solo 1,5 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM) after a few unsuccessful attempts (e.g. wrong xom.efi file). So today I ran a few standard Windows performance tests. Bussiness Winstone 2004 gave a result of 15,2, which is nothing special - it's in the middle of range for PC notebooks. And MacMini basically has a notebook performance - 2,5" disk runs at 5400 rpm, and its processor Core Solo is found in new PC notebooks. (for comparison: Fujitsu-Siemens LifeBook E8020 with Pentium M 2.13 GHz and 1 GB RAM had 25.4 points, on the other hand Acer Aspire 5672WLMI with CoreDuo 1,67 GHz and 1 GB RAM achieved 20,9 points)

Despite the lack of proper video driver, the result on Winstone Content Creation 2004 was much more impressive (22,4 points). Of course, CC2004 is all about multimedia file crunching (converting and rendering video&sound) and that's the area where Macs have always excelled. (above mentioned machines had 27,2 points - Fujitsu Siemens, and 27,5 points - Acer)

So the verdict is, MacMini runs Windows XP very decently, excells at boot - apparently due to EFI which is superior to BIOS.

I'll try to get hands on some other machines, but meanwhile I encourage other members to repeat BWS 2004 and CC 2004 tests - for the sake of comparison.

[thebalaa]

lack of proper video driveR?

[paulyras]

Yesterday night I managed to install XP on MacMini (Core Solo 1,5 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM)

Marjetica,

I thought that there was a pretty significant performance hit if the memory isn't installed in matching pairs. Is that just with a duo processor (I don' think so, but I could be wrong)?

Just curious,

Paul