A friend took the plunge and purchased a 24 inch iMac. He's asked me to help install Windows on the other side. He wants it for two reasons:
1) "Just in case" ...
2) Play some games.
I know he has Bioshock and that his games are usually not the bleeding edge, need a $400 graphic card type.
Based on this, I'd to hear which version of Windows you'd recommend (and why.)
My instincts are screaming to go with XP, but I'm not a gamer. I believe XP is a "snappier" and more stable option, but I haven't tried either OS on a Mac. I'd like to lean towards Vista, but I'd feel more comfortable if SP1 was already out and we were waiting for SP2.
A friend took the plunge and purchased a 24 inch iMac. He's asked me to help install Windows on the other side. He wants it for two reasons:
1) "Just in case" ...
2) Play some games.
What a bunch of crap (not from you, from your friend, and of course he can't help it, he's been trained to be afraid of change).
Save the money he'd blow on another copy of Windows and buy a PS or Xbox if he likes games. Better experience, and avoids wasting his time and computer running Windows for such a trivial pursuit. Lasts a LOT longer too.
I can see the point of installing Windows (XP Pro only) on Boot Camp or Crossover or Parallels to run that one program that doesn't run on Macs for business, but that's a considerable waste of time and resources for anything else.
I think Bioshock is 1 of the 2 games that Microsoft is making you have Direct X 10 (Vista only) for. I think it's been cracked though.
Nope, those are Halo 2 and Shadowrun. There is a user made patch to make Halo 2 run in XP (it's technically a DX9 game just shimmed into DX10 and Vista) but I am not sure about Shadowrun.
Bioshock does absolutely require pixel shader 3 support though, but I'm 99% sure that the HD 2600 pro in a 24" iMac supports that no problem.
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Go with XP. I ran both at different times on my Macbook Pro. Vista probably used half the system resources and took up a ton of hard drive space.
Vista didn't quite install properly and completely messed my partition. Without going into detail, I ended up wiping the drive, copying my data back and starting all over again with XP.
I went with XP because I had a copy I could use (legit, of course). I did it for the same reasons, there's a few games I like that I wanted to play. The iMac does pretty well and the display is awesome for games. One great reason to go this route for games is that you can get better graphics drivers (use the DH mod to use the latest Catalyst drivers from ATI) and the games are cheaper. I got Quake Wars for $24.99 and Quake 4 for $9.99 from NCIX.
I plan to get Bioshock (see YouTube for demos of it running on an iMac) and Gears of War.
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