Windows on iMac update

Windows on iMac update
After much jiggery-pokery, I finally got everything configured to have a Windows XP partition on the iMac. It actually works, which is just a freaky thing. It ain't right to see the Windows desktop running up there. It just ain't!!!

Anyway, I have to mark the whole experiment as a learning experience.

Lessons learned

It all works as advertised.

By "all", I mean FreeNAS and BootCamp. Aside from my own towering ignorance, it all installed and executed just fine. Two thumbs up for these products.

Wireless networking is noticably too slow for some apps

Although I have a proof-of-concept NAS to which I fully intend to rip all my DVD movies for streaming through the AppleTV adapter I fully intend to buy, 801.11g just isn't fast enough to host all my iPhoto work over it. I ought to take a look at Aperture, since I know there's a trial version available, to see if it's a little more NAS-friendly, but iPhoto is just dog-slow to start up, import, and shut down when the library is hosted over a wireless link.

Sims 2 still doesn't work right

It seems that nothing that I do is going to make it possible for my sweetie to play her "Sims 2" on the iMac. I instralled the game plus all the expansions and applied all the patches, and still get weird display artifacts under Windows-on-iMac. The "native" Mac version still isn't a universal binary and plays dog-slow under emulation, plus which all the expansion sets are for Windows, not Mac, so it doesn't have all the base content. Bleah.

So, I conclude by saying it sort-of worked, and I might leave my iTunes hosted on the NAS for when I finish ripping the DVDs and want to stream them to the teevee. But clearly the iPhoto library has to come back to local storage. I might keep the NAS online and run backups to it periodically, now that I think about it.

I will mention that Civ4 works fine on Windows-on-iMac, so Kathy and I will be able to play without hotseat! Yay! AOE3 is next on the install list.