Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Today, Sun released VirtualBox 2.0, a major revision to the (partially open source) desktop virtualization software. I have long used VirtualBox on my Windows machines as my virtualization product of choice due to its compactness, functionality, and low impact on the host system. Although I’m happy with VMware Fusion on the Mac, I intend to try out VirtualBox there, too, to see how it compares.

If you haven’t already tried VirtualBox, you ought to. It works very well, virtualizing Windows and Linux guests on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac hosts with respectable performance. One thing I really love about it is that it doesn’t bog down my Vista system like VMware with installed drivers and services. It just installs and works and gets out of the way when you’re not using it.

VirtualBox supports shared folders, USB, and has guest additions for Windows and Linux to provide resolution independence and performance boosts. The new 2.0 version adds 64-bit guest OS support for 64-bit hosts along with performance and stability fixes. The Mac version now has a native look and feel and better networking, too.

One really interesting twist for folks interested in desktop virtualization (aka VDI on VMware) is integration with remote desktop protocol (RDP). VirtualBox guests can be configured to act as RDP servers, with thin(ish) clients accessing them over a network and even sharing their USB devices seamlessly. I’m getting pretty excited about the desktop virtualization concept - I’ll be keeping my eyes on companies like stealthy Old Road Computing Virtual Computer to see what they’re up to!

Yup, my Boot Camp drive icon is customized, too!

In my last post, I discussed the simple but confusing steps required to add custom icons to Mac OS X drives. I mentioned that there were some tricks to getting custom icons on some drives, however, including Boot Camp and NTFS disks. This week, I’ll show how to customize these as well.

There are two core problems with customizing drive icons for certain volumes:

1. OS X can’t directly write to anything but HFS+ and FAT, and this includes writing icons
2. OS X needs a special resource on the drive to indicate that the custom icon should be used, and only HFS+ supports this

But it’s easy enough to get around these limitations. Apple takes care of number 2, and we can cover number 1 in one of two ways.

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This makes it much easier to see which drive is which!

I previously wrote about the benefits of custom drive icons, which can help you to keep your removable and internal drives straight, and how to create them on Windows Vista. Well, Mac OS X surprised me by using the same generic icon for every drive, so I set about figuring out how to customize them here, too.

It turns out it’s not only simple to do, but illustrates an odd way in which Apple implemented their split resource/data fork filesystem idea in a GUI. This exercise taught me a lot - what an ICNS file is, how Apple stores drive icons, what a droplet is, and how to use GIMP on a Mac.

This is part 1 - where I’ll go over the basics. Part 2 covers custom Boot Camp drive icons and other troubles.

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I recently mentioned how impressed I was with the speed of my MacBook, even when running Windows in Boot Camp. Of course, this was a subjective feeling, so I decided to try timing some events to see if the clock agreed with my brain. Sure enough, the Mac is faster than my Dell XPS M1330 by a good margin. But I was surprised to learn that Vista, even in Ultimate guise, wasn’t half bad, either. The root of my performance gripes seems to be what happens after Vista is booted - after the desktop appears, all OSes spend time doing something in the background, but Vista spends much more time.

My test was simple: I used the iPhone’s stopwatch to time the following key events after startup:

1. The Mac Gong or disappearance of the PC or VMware BIOS screen
2. The appearance of the login box (I paused the timer at this point to give me time to enter my password)
3. The appearance of the desktop
4. I then clicked on the icons to launch my mail and web browser apps, assuming this would be the first thing most people would do on startup, and timed how long it took for each to load and present content
5. Finally, I stopped the clock when the system appeared usable - hourglasses disappeared, the disk stopped chugging like crazy, and all background apps had loaded and were running
6. I also timed how long it took for the system to power down after ordering a shutdown

Not surprisingly, the MacBook with OS X was fastest, though it took a surprisingly longish time to get Mail and Safari launched compared to Firefox and Outlook in Windows. OS X also excels at knocking off the backup tasks and giving a stable, ready-to-use system.

Booting Windows Vista Ultimate in Boot Camp was surprisingly speedy, too, and this was the core of my test. The Mac gave me a working Windows environment in just 2:15, compared to 1:40 for OS X and 3:10 for my Dell XPS M1330. I’m not sure exactly what the Dell is doing, but it churns and chugs for quite a while on bootup, even after I stopped the clock, and it’s got a nice clean install with few apps running.

Finally, I timed my Boot Camp volume in VMware Fusion (1.1.3) and found that, although it was speedy enough when it was running, it took 30 seconds longer to get started than booting natively. But even Fusion was quicker than the Dell.

My feeling is that Microsoft has spent some time optimizing the startup experience in Vista, trimming the time it takes to get a login window and desktop by shifting some work to background tasks that interfere with usability once the system appears to be running. A clever trick, that, but one that frustrates me on a daily basis as I stare at a desktop full of icons that I can’t use quite yet.

Once again, this is not the most scientific test ever, but it helps to show what I feel about the Mac:

• It’s quicker when I want to sit down and start working
• Windows is much quicker on the Mac than the Dell, despite only slightly better specs (2.2/4 GB vs. 2.0/2 GB)

I ran each test a few times, and although they varied by a few seconds they were fairly consistent.

As I transition to the Mac, I often find myself needing to transfer a file back and forth quickly. I could create SMB shares on both systems, but this requires both to be connected to a wired or wireless Ethernet LAN. Luckily, both Vista and OS X offer functional Bluetooth sharing technology for quick, easy file transfer on the fly.

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I’ve been very pleased by Apple’s integrated backup application in OS X, Time Machine.  It cleverly removes many of the barriers to backup, and makes restore both simple and fun.  But I’ve noticed that it’s not quite perfect out of the box.  Two default settings in particular bother me:  It is set to back up everything, including OS files and caches, and spotlight needlessly indexes your Time Machine drive.  Luckily, both are easy fixes.

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Have a Mac and a TiVo?  I was thinking of grabbing Roxio’s Toast 9 Titanium so I could use the TiVo To Go features anyway, and Amazon surprised me by putting it as a Gold Box item today.  It’s $49 with a $20 rebate, with free shipping!  Expired!  Sweet deal!

I know I’m not the first to do this, but it does make me chuckle to have upgraded a brand new machine less than a week after buying it.  That’s right, my brand new MacBook Pro now has 4 GB of RAM and a massive 320 GB of disk space.  If you’re thinking of upgrading your disk, whether you have a Mac or PC, now might be a good time, as prices have recently hit a new low point.

Read on for details on swapping a disk in a MacBook Pro, finding a great deal on the drive, and how to get Boot Camp and VMware Fusion to work again after you do it!  Surprisingly, this was the hardest part… Continue Reading »

The lowly computer keyboard is so ubiquitous that it can seem unchanging, but nothing could be further from the truth.  It is one of the most important components of any system, and has survived all assaults by new technologies from the mouse to the pen to the microphone, yet its evolution is marked by legacy functions and terminology that can leave computer users scratching their heads.  Today we deal with an issue that has faced many over the past decades:  How to use a PC keyboard with a Macintosh and vice versa. Continue Reading »

So the Mac has joined my replacement work Dell - two new computers in two days!  Here are my first thoughts on the hardware:

• The MacBook Pro is much sturdier than the average PC notebook, and even somewhat better than the high-end machines I’ve used (like my replacement Dell XPS M1330)
• The machine is hot on the bottom when using it a lot, and even pretty hot on the top!
• The fan is really loud - much louder than I was expecting
• The MagSafe power cord is cute but very delicate - I’m not surprised at all that they break and burn right and left!
• The screen is gorgeous - I got the matte model rather than the glossy since I hate the bright reflections I always fight with on my other machines
• I wish the 15″ model I got had more than two USB ports - I just know I’m going to be swapping a lot more than I used to.  But the new Dell has only two ports, too - my old XPS M1210 had four!
• Since I got the older model, it included the Apple remote, which is cute
• Everything about this machine is classier and more elegant than any PC I’ve ever used, from the packaging to the case to the documentation to the power cord
• I hate the auto-dimming screen - it reacts WAY too fast, constantly dimming and brightening as my shadow falls over the left-side speaker grille. This was the first Mac feature to be disabled!

• Anyone who complains about UAC on Windows should try OS X - it interrupts just about as much but forces you to type in your password, too!
• I love the packaging system - everything is self-contained so you can just drag and drop or delete
• It took me the longest time to figure out how to be able to shut the lid and use the computer with an external monitor - turns out it always sleeps when you shut the lid but then wakes up again when you click the mouse or type on the keyboard
• The included applications look much more useful than the ones that ship with Vista, which themselves are far better than anything Microsoft bundled in the past - I can’t wait to use iMovie and Garage Band, and iPhoto seems just as good as Google’s Picasa
• I’m loving the included UNIX utilities - ssh and scp should be part of every operating system out of the box!
• It’s ridiculously hard to change the hostname - apparently you have to edit /etc/hostconfig by hand!  Do they expect that no regular people want to name their computer?!?
• Network setup beats Vista hands-down!  It correctly suggested that my wireless router was filtering based on MAC address, while Vista just said “can’t connect”
• I already installed Boot Camp and VMware Fusion with a Windows Vista partition - talk about easing the transition!