The Ease of Boot Camp
Just yesterday I got to use Boot Camp for the very first time. My mission was to install Windows along-side the already installed Apple OS X Tiger on a MacBook Pro. At first I felt a little intimidated because I thought it would require a lot of work, but this is an Apple product we’re talking about! It’s so easy. I bet the next I use Boot Camp, I could do it blind-folded, really…it’s THAT easy!
First you need to download Boot Camp, which is a free download from Apple’s Boot Camp web site. On this website you can see what Boot Camp is and how it works. The download itself is large if you’re a dial-up user but only takes about 10 minutes if you’re a broadband user.
Once the download is completed you can view the included PDFs about how to install and use Boot Camp, but I skipped that and just installed it right off. Once the install was complete, I navigated to /Applications/Utilities/ and opened the Boot Camp Assistant.
The Boot Camp Assistant makes the whole process seemless. It’s like, click-click-insert blank CD for drivers-insert Windows XP CD and you’re done. Yes, it’s that simple. The only part that really required user interaction was when you select how you would like to size your hard drive (partitioning), making the driver CD and inserting the Windows XP CD.
Then you can reboot the machine, and it’ll bring you through the Windows XP install which is quite easy too, click-click-type some things in and you’re done. After Windows has installed itself, you can boot up into Windows, put in the drivers CD you’ve made with the Boot Camp Assistant, install the drivers, and you’re done!
The whole process takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. I did noticed that when you install Windows it is a hair slower then using a normal PC, but that’s not really an issue.
Looks like Apple has done it again, and made things that could be so complicated easier then waking up in the morning. For the faint of heart Small Dog offers the option of installing Boot Camp and Windows XP Home or Pro on any Intel Mac.