BootCamp Update V1.1 Beta

That's the new news. Not so new any more since it came about on the 15th. Go to Apple's BootCamp Site.

According to TUAW.com, you don not need to reinstall the whole Windows again from scratch.

May be I will do this on the weekend, if I feel adventurous.

MacBook Pro Battery Exchange RECEIVED!

As I blogged earlier, there is a recall on some batteries on MacBook Pros sold earlier this year. Since the exchange is only available from online registration, I immediately registered and got the following confirmation:

=====
From:
Reply-To:
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 09:14:23 +0000 (GMT)
To:
Subject: Battery Confirmation Reference No: ######

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for ordering a replacement battery. Your request is currently being processed.

It will take approximately 3 to 5 business days for your replacement battery to arrive. Please note that shipping times may vary due to availability.

We appreciate your cooperation with this exchange program.

Apple
=====

It just arrived this afternoon on 11th August. I am not upset by any means... actually I am quite happy that it had gone smoothly. Just want to point out that 31st July to 11 August is 8 business days - exclusive of the begin and end dates.

It came with the return courier slip and all as they mentioned, but I am still wondering about my standards for a back up battery.....

Tip of the Day for BootCampers

I know.. I know.. How can I call this "Tip of the Day" when it is the only tip I have ever put down. Whatever.

Because of the long bootup problems on the Mac Mini, my wife has given up MacOSX and insists on using BootCamped WinXP. So now she want access to all the pictures and stuff that I had loaded up into the Mac partition. Which is kinda troublesome since I can't see the Mac partition from Windows, but I can see the Windows partition from Mac. So I decided to move the pictures to the Windows partition so that both sides can access. However, after moving 3GB worth of content over to Windows partition, I only had about 500MB of memory left in the Windows side. Naturally I went to try to expand my Windows partition as I still had over 30GB left in the Mac partition. NO CAN DO. There is no way to expand the Windows partition once you have set it up in BootCamp at the beginning. I have searched online and have come back empty handed. The only way is to wipe out the Windows installation^ and do it over again (with a larger allocation). So.....

TIP: When you BootCamp your Mac, do not be stingy and give it ... say ... 10GB. It ain't enough. Give it at least 15GB.

^ I am still debating this as I am concerned whether my Windows license will still be valid after I reinstall the new Windows.

Parallels Desktop RAM Allocation: Less is More?

There's been some discussions on whether it is better to allocate less RAM to the Parallels installation rather than as much as you can. Some say that you should not exceed 512Mb and other 800MB. Of course, I currently have it allocated at 1148MB... See a screen capture of my Parallels Console here.

There are some people's input on MacWindows.com: "TIP: Optimizing Parallels Desktop performance: Less memory is more". An example there was:
==================
Parallels Desktop:

764 MB of RAM
Windows XP boot time = 36seconds
Windows XP shutdown = 20seconds
Launching IE to MSN.com = 7seconds

512 MB of RAM
Windows XP boot time = 23 seconds
Windows XP shutdown = 20 seconds
Launching IE to MSN.com = 5 seconds
=================

So I did the same test just to see for myself, and I did not see much difference.

Parallels 1GB RAM Allocated to Windows XP Home
Startup: 45 seconds
Shutdown: 25 seconds

Parallels 764MB RAM Allocated to Windows XP Home
Startup: 43 seconds
Shutdown: 24 seconds

The above differences could have easily been my own error. I guess any difference would depend on what kind of set up you have and how much physical RAM you have. I ran both tests above with OSX (primary OS) running Entourage, Word, Safari, Firefox, iTunes, and iChat all active. So I guess it was a good thing that I have 2GB of RAM.

In any case, I am keeping the setting at 764MB for now to see if it makes any difference to the Windows side.

Interestingly there is a poll on the Parallels forum from users to input their feedback on what is the Mac System RAM vs the Parallels allocation. For 2GB RAM like mine, 10% of all voters allocate 1GB or more to Parallels, 37% allocate between 768MB and 999MB, and 40% allocate between 512MB and 768MB. The balance % were those who had less than 2GB RAM. This was out of 30 voters. I guess I will add in my vote now...