Can I install Windows 8 on my Aging Mac?
June 15, 2015 7:39 AM Subscribe
I am hoping to be able to install Windows 8 on my Mac so that I can do a few work demos; I will be using Windows with only MS Office installed, and using it perhaps once a week at most.
Here are my questions:
1) Will my aging 2009 imac be able to handle this? It otherwise is in good shape.
2) I am confused about installation, do I need to get Bootcamp to install Windows?
3) Should I also get Parallels?
Here are my questions:
1) Will my aging 2009 imac be able to handle this? It otherwise is in good shape.
2) I am confused about installation, do I need to get Bootcamp to install Windows?
3) Should I also get Parallels?
Oh, crap, I apologize, apparently according to this from Apple, your model is not supported for Bootcamp and Windows 8, only Windows 7.
posted by General Malaise at 7:45 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by General Malaise at 7:45 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks, General Malaise, I can also install Windows 7, if that helps my situation?
posted by nanook at 8:12 AM on June 15, 2015
posted by nanook at 8:12 AM on June 15, 2015
Try VirtualBox first? It runs within OSX, so you do incur that overhead, but for your usage it would probably suffice and it's free, so you can give it a try at no risk.
posted by aramaic at 8:15 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by aramaic at 8:15 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Are your work demos something that wouldn't run on Office for Mac? I've heard complaints about that port before, but it might still be cheaper/easier/faster than installing an entire second OS.
posted by fifthrider at 8:23 AM on June 15, 2015
posted by fifthrider at 8:23 AM on June 15, 2015
Response by poster: I do demos for the Mac, but I also need demos for PC users just because, snowflakes.
posted by nanook at 8:31 AM on June 15, 2015
posted by nanook at 8:31 AM on June 15, 2015
I second VirtualBox, since it's free and you wouldn't have to re-partition your hard drive. There's also the factor of Apple not having Windows 8 drivers for your machine, meaning not everything would work perfectly. Virtualization doesn't have a whole lot of overhead, and Windows 8 is lighter than you'd think. The biggest limiting factor will probably be RAM.
To be clear, Boot Camp is Apple's support for installing a second operating system on your Mac computer. This means you would have your partition with OS X shrunk down, and a new partition created to install Windows. This would leave you with less space when you use your Mac with OS X.
Virtualization creates a virtual machine inside a file on OS X's partition, and that file is only a little bigger than the files Windows is actually using (It'll allocate more space as it needs it). You open the Windows 8 virtual machine inside VirtualBox while OS X is running, and it boots up with its own simulated resources. It won't be as fast as a full installation, but for office software, this will probably not be an issue.
Of course, the best solution would be software written natively for OS X, but it sounds like you wouldn't be considering this if that were an option.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:33 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
To be clear, Boot Camp is Apple's support for installing a second operating system on your Mac computer. This means you would have your partition with OS X shrunk down, and a new partition created to install Windows. This would leave you with less space when you use your Mac with OS X.
Virtualization creates a virtual machine inside a file on OS X's partition, and that file is only a little bigger than the files Windows is actually using (It'll allocate more space as it needs it). You open the Windows 8 virtual machine inside VirtualBox while OS X is running, and it boots up with its own simulated resources. It won't be as fast as a full installation, but for office software, this will probably not be an issue.
Of course, the best solution would be software written natively for OS X, but it sounds like you wouldn't be considering this if that were an option.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:33 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Speaking of RAM, do you have more than 2 GB? If you have 2 GB or less, I suggest you add more RAM or run Windows 7 under Boot Camp instead. It'd still probably work with visualization in that case, but the lack of memory would make it frustratingly slow.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:38 AM on June 15, 2015
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:38 AM on June 15, 2015
Response by poster: I have 4 GB RAM. I like the idea of not having to repartition my drive.
posted by nanook at 8:46 AM on June 15, 2015
posted by nanook at 8:46 AM on June 15, 2015
VirtualBox is free, but in the sense of that old snark about Linux that "it's free only if your time is worthless". If you're reasonably technically competent and know how to install Windows you probably won't have too much trouble, but it definitely won't hold your hand. It works, but there are some dubious UX decisions in there.
Parallels is significantly more user-friendly and is intended pretty much for your exact scenario.
If you go the Bootcamp route you can use Parallels to run the Windows installation from inside OSX (and if performance is too poor, you can just boot into Bootcamp instead).
(Edit: 4GB is cutting it pretty close for running VMs. You might want to consider an upgrade to 8GB or 16GB -- on older Macbooks you can DIY the upgrade and the RAM is pretty cheap.)
posted by neckro23 at 10:12 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Parallels is significantly more user-friendly and is intended pretty much for your exact scenario.
If you go the Bootcamp route you can use Parallels to run the Windows installation from inside OSX (and if performance is too poor, you can just boot into Bootcamp instead).
(Edit: 4GB is cutting it pretty close for running VMs. You might want to consider an upgrade to 8GB or 16GB -- on older Macbooks you can DIY the upgrade and the RAM is pretty cheap.)
posted by neckro23 at 10:12 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
FWIW if you're going to pay for an emulator I recommend VMWare Fusion over Parallels these days.
posted by mkultra at 11:00 AM on June 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by mkultra at 11:00 AM on June 15, 2015 [2 favorites]
Seconding the lots of RAM; Win 8 likes 4 GB, and Yosemite likes a shade over 4 GB too.
Some older macs had a surprise firmware update that allowed them to use much more than their stated maximum amount of RAM. Apple have kept fairly quiet about the capabilities it added. My Late 2008 unibody MacBook (13", MacBook 5,1, 2.4 GHz CoreDuo) was 4 GB max at launch, but is happy running 8 GB under Yosemite. I'm not saying it's fast, but it's very usable for a > 6 year old computer.
posted by scruss at 11:17 AM on June 15, 2015
Some older macs had a surprise firmware update that allowed them to use much more than their stated maximum amount of RAM. Apple have kept fairly quiet about the capabilities it added. My Late 2008 unibody MacBook (13", MacBook 5,1, 2.4 GHz CoreDuo) was 4 GB max at launch, but is happy running 8 GB under Yosemite. I'm not saying it's fast, but it's very usable for a > 6 year old computer.
posted by scruss at 11:17 AM on June 15, 2015
If you can locate the last supported Boot Camp installer for your model, you can install whatever version of Windows is officially supported by that Boot Camp installer. I just did this to get Vista (sigh) onto my 2006-era MBP (which is a Core Duo, not a Core 2 Duo, and thus stuck at 32 bit and not 64 bit). If you've got media for Windows 7 that would probably be your best option.
All that said, while Apple might not support using Boot Camp to install Windows 8, once you have Windows 7 on there you could probably upgrade it. There are some weird differences on the margins, but I've read that the driver model hasn't changed since Vista, so if you have hardware supported by Windows 7 the same drivers should continue to work in Windows 8. Apple won't really help you in this regard, but if you have the time to try it and Windows 8 is better for your demos (for whatever reason) it should work.
posted by fedward at 11:49 AM on June 15, 2015
All that said, while Apple might not support using Boot Camp to install Windows 8, once you have Windows 7 on there you could probably upgrade it. There are some weird differences on the margins, but I've read that the driver model hasn't changed since Vista, so if you have hardware supported by Windows 7 the same drivers should continue to work in Windows 8. Apple won't really help you in this regard, but if you have the time to try it and Windows 8 is better for your demos (for whatever reason) it should work.
posted by fedward at 11:49 AM on June 15, 2015
You can install windows 8 and just jimmy rig the windows 7 drivers in. It WILL work. Similar to how you could usually get 32bit xp drivers working on 32bit vista/7.
That said, i did this on my 2007 imac at one point and... don't bother, just install windows 7. It's still fully supported by microsoft and apple for this.
posted by emptythought at 6:24 PM on June 15, 2015
That said, i did this on my 2007 imac at one point and... don't bother, just install windows 7. It's still fully supported by microsoft and apple for this.
posted by emptythought at 6:24 PM on June 15, 2015
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I would use Bootcamp instead of Parallels because Parallels would have the overhead of OSX on top of the Windows layer.
If you have any recent version of OSX, you already have Bootcamp.
posted by General Malaise at 7:43 AM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]