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I'm a few days behind you Philip and it's all sounding very scary at the moment! Funny all I want (forced to actually) to do is run one app in windoze. A lot of expense and hassle for not much really.
Keep us informed and then write the book!

If it's just one app, have you checked that Cross Over Mac isn't a better way?

I can tell you that the last two days working in Windows and Dos environments make me sure I want to stay with the Mac. Just installed Fusion and whilst I got Ubuntu 8.04 running no problem, I'm getting a bluescreen if I try to start Windows from Bootcamp.....it goes on!

Phil

Arrrgggh!!! OK, the blue screen that VMWare created with my bootcamp partition, extends into Bootcamp natively...in other words, I can no longer boot into Windows....it won't even let me go into safe mode.

Found this thread.... http://communities.vmware.com/message/881404#881404

...so it's obviously not uncommon

Wow...seriously had a gutsful of Windows. Off for a curry and a beer and cooling off period.

Phil

Curry and cooling off, don't they go together like ..er um Bill Gates and Steve Jobs?

Leopard: in and going
Bootcamp: in and going
XP:in and going including internet, so updates done.
XP to my wireless network: not going yet
One glitch so far the numbers bit on my keyboard won't go but the rest is fine. Gotta fix?
Another I've been told to restart as part of software updating, does that require me to start in windows mode or will restart in Mac mode do the job? just curiosity really.
I'm too scared to try any parallels or (con)fusion

I managed to get XP going again by choosing not to boot in safe mode, but a setting that said something like "last settings that worked" at the dos prompt. XP is running in VMWare also...see, the curry and beer(s) did help!

Having now got access to both, I'd say that neither are that daunting, but you only truly need them if you need to be doing Mac *AND* PC at the same time. Mostly, I tend to just reboot if I have a lot of Windows stuff to do.

Phil

Sam Clarkson wrote:
One glitch so far the numbers bit on my keyboard won't go but the rest is fine. Gotta fix?Yep, press the Clear key on the numeric keypad. This acts as the NumLock key on Windows.

Restart windows only for Windows updates if required. As far as Parallels is concerned, shutting down the Mac before shutting down Windows generates a warning from Parallels. If you are in Bootcamp a restart will give you the option to choose which OS to start back up in, unless you have checked one for default.

I worked with Bootcamp for about a couple of weeks before I got fed up rebooting to change operating systems.
I only have Windoze because there is a couple of bits of software I cannot get for OS X. it is not necessary for me to be able to work in both, but Windoze being what it is, I like the ability to be able to do something in OS X while Windoze is getting it's act together.
Windoze setting is 'Last known good' Very useful in Windoze if you've installed a new driver that has caused problems - something that used to happen quite regularly.
Why complicate things by having Bootcamp and VMware/Parallels?

Easy...because there's how I want to work (usually in OS X) and how others want to work. I once did a stunning presentation using Virtual PC and at the end of it all a guy came up and said "Well, that's all well and good...but I don't use a Mac!".

In other words, he'd seen the Mac surrounding and got confused. I also like to be in Windoze when I'm doing long intensive Windows stuff..like I'm doing right now at work. Being in OS X is a distraction and a strain on the system.

That said, I mostly like the convience of being in OS X and being able to quickly pop open Windows and do something...so that's where VMWare/Parallels comes in. And given that both V/P can point to and use the BootCamp partition....you've got the best of both worlds without having to have two versions of XP installed.

And..you can do things like Linux.....finally got Ubuntu to work at home thanks to VMWare/no network, compared to Parallels/Proxy at work....where I can't get it go.

Phil