Windows 7 on a Mac Mini

An inside look at Beyond Binary labs. I've got three demo machines running Windows 7, including the Mac Mini.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)

Finding myself with some free time on Tuesday, I decided to try and see whether and how Windows 7 would install using Boot Camp on a Mac.

I must say, I get a little sick pleasure turning a Mac into a Windows machine, knowing that it has to make both Microsoft and Apple's skin crawl to see their progeny used in such a way.

Plus, Macs do tend to make for pretty zippy (if pricey) Windows machines.

With that--and an older demo Mac Mini I hadn't been using much--I was off to the races. I got a fair bit of help from this site. The operating system installed no problem, although I had a bit of trouble getting the sound to work.

But after trying a couple of things, I was able to use the driver on a Leopard DVD (the Boot Camp program itself wouldn't run, but was able to use Windows' File Explorer to get the driver itself from the disk.)

I now have three Windows 7 machines up and running--a Lenovo X300, an older Dell XPS M1210 and, as of Tuesday, the Mac Mini. That's in addition to my corporate sanctioned IBM ThinkPad running Windows XP. Things are getting a bit crowded in my cube, but I did some cleaning and have also expanded into to another nearby desk.

For today, I am using the Mac Mini as my main machine, including for writing this blog. I'm not the benchmarking type, but it feels plenty zippy doing the basics. I also had the machine run its internal rating system known as the "Windows Experience Index," which rates a system based on its internal components. Because of it's slow hard drive, the Mini ranked only a 2.0.

The experience index, introduced with Vista, offers a sort of bare-bones assessment of how fast a computer should be based on its various components. It's not a real-world test, which would vary based on the number of applications one installs, their network connection, and other factors.

Here's Windows 7's take on how ready the Mac Mini is to run the operating system. It got a 2.0 out of 7.9, based largely on its slower hard drive.

(Credit: CNET News)

With Vista, Microsoft ranked systems from 1.0 to 5.9. With Windows 7, it upped the highest possible ranking to 7.9 and made some other tweaks to the system.

By way of comparison, the older Dell XPS also scores a 2.0, again based on the hard drive. The Lenovo X300 scored a 3.1, weighed down not by its hard drive (it uses a fast solid-state drive instead) but by its graphics performance.

I plan to keep trying out the different machines, as well as installing different combinations of software to see how things work in various setups.

Now, I like Windows 7. I think it has the potential to be everything Vista should have been.

Vista had a great built-in graphics engine, but didn't really harness that engine to make working simpler. It had better security, but used it more like a weapon to wield over the user, as opposed to making them invisibly safer. That said, I'm not ready to sign on to this petition, which calls for Microsoft to release the product right now. There are still some issues to work out.

I still have not been able to get the newsroom's Sprint wireless card working and the video driver on the X300 crashes when I try and record TV and do other tasks at the same time. On that same system, Word 2007 has started crashing, sending me back to WordPad.

As for using a Mac to run Windows 7, there are some pluses and minuses. First of all, it's not supported--by anyone. Apple approves of Boot Camp for XP and Vista, so if Windows 7 messes up your Mac, I can't imagine you'll find much sympathy in Cupertino (though Apple might use your experience in one of its ads).

More likely, though, you may have trouble finding all of the drivers you need. The Mac Mini is kind of the easiest one, with the least number of drivers required. I've also read about some problems iMac users have had with blue screens of death under Windows 7, allegedly caused by an Nvidia driver issue. In any case, it's been enough to keep me from putting Win 7 on my home iMac.

On the plus side, the Windows 7 beta allows you to try Windows for free (legally) on your Mac. For those who don't want to go the Boot Camp route, either because they are risk averse or because they actually want to use their Mac as a Mac, there are the usual virtualization options--namely VMware and Parallels. I might just try that on the iMac.

[talkingfuture]

Thats good to know. Hopefully Boot Camp will support Windows 7 once it is released. I have been using a Mac for 3 years now so I'll wait and see if I need it. It would be nice to use my CAD software from work I suppose.

[tigersref]

i actually have windows 7 running on my new macbook pro.
pros: can run all windows programs
con: I'm having issues with Verizon Access Manager (tethered blackberry modem). it keeps crashing. another thing is that when Im MAC, i cannot use boot-to-windows in the preferences. I have to restart the laptop and while its booting, i hold down the option key to get the choice that allows me to switch to windows.
this is a pain.

[BTBEME5150]

Parallels works fine with Windows 7 - I have been running it on an older 2GHz Core Duo iMac. RAM hungry, however.

[Joking611]

I loved your Windows 7 on a Mac Mini article (I'm using Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro myself, also more to annoy others than for any particular reason).

I noticed that you went so far as to mention VMware and Parallels as virtualization options for OS X.

You may want to give Sun's VirtualBox a try. I tried it, it's free, and it is so much zippier than Parallels that I converted my XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Ubuntu virtual machines over to VirtualBox and scrapped Parallels.

[bonesbautista]

Ditto on the article - cool stuff.

I run XP SP3 in a Boot Camp partition - it's a life saver. Won't try Vista - I'm running a couple of Autodesk applications and don't want to screw up the licensing.

I'm also running Win 7 in a VirtualBox partition with only 768 MB of RAM - no issues, and it's actually serviceable. I might take the jump to replace XP when Win 7 hits the streets for real.

[citrusonic]

I cant wait till the Mac can play PC Games on OSX, you wont even need to have Windows anymore

[pithenumber]

Its a hardware problem. Macs don't have pwnful graphics cards. The highest end card you can get is the Quadro FX 5600. It is a workstation card, not designed for gaming. Try playing Crysis on an iMac, you'll get my point.

[random truth]

@pithenumber
However Mac OSX has core components that would make the games use less resources... if they had a different codebase and not just the c code ported to macintosh.

[unknown unknown]

Then game developers need to write for the Mac (unlikely if people can use Boot Camp) or write an API that is compatible with the Windows API and DirectX similar to what Wine and CrossOver have been doing. You probably also need Mono since some developers are using the .Net framework.

[MPB]

Amen to that!

[Random_Walk]

Something I am curious about, Ina: How does Windows 7 run under Parallels or VMWare Fusion on the Mac Mini? Not everyone wants to reboot a computer just to switch back and forth.

[Random_Walk]

I meant to say: How will it run? I would like to see you give it a try.

[MaggieRed]

Minimum 2 GB ram preferably twice that would be better. Otherwise, I run XP Pro all day long on my iMac 24 using memory hungry Adobe apps.

[eadeguzman]

Random_Walk -- not sure what you mean... But you can run Parallels against a BootCamp partition. So that you have the best of both worlds... You can dual boot using Boot Campt... and when you're on a OSX and you really need to launch an App quickly from Windows, then you can launch Parallels... It's actually quite neat... you can drag-and-drop a file from Windows into the Mac HD (this one doesn't work currently with Windows 7 as the parallels driver crashes). You can also copy a text in Mac and paste it to Notepad in Windows, launch a Window app or trigger the Windows Start button from the doc.

[ballmerisanape]

So, basically, your saying that your experience with installing an unsupported beta OS on Apple hardware was better than what many people experienced when "upgrading" their PCs to Vista? ;)

[Super2online]

It sounds like it may also be smoother than upgrading the MAC OS as well!

[Seaspray0]

@galmerisanape. That's basically what I've been hearing from others as well. Windows 7 beta is a free download and trial. Perhaps you should try it yourself and make your own judgement. It does consume more resources than windows XP, but it is nowhere near the resource hog that vista was. Since it uses the same drivers as vista, it's also not suffering from driver issues since the bugs have long been worked out and they are now widely available. Why not give a try and tell us if you have any problems installing and using it?

[ballmerisanape]

I would love to try it.. but don't have the hardware. The only PC I have can't be toyed with.. and my powerbook is a g4.

[tehrani625]

One thing that I have noticed with Win7 is that everyone (including myself) has had issues with the audio drivers. I wonder if Win7 makes any sounds?

[DrtyDogg]

Yes it has default sounds, my sound card(integrated) was detected and installed during setup.

[Seaspray0]

It does make sounds. As for drivers, you can learn a trick from the linux folks by looking in the device manager at the details. The hardware provides a VEN and DEV number which is unique to the hardware. By doing a search on that, you can identify the make/model of the device. The vendor of the device typically has the driver you need.

[homercles82]

After installation my soundcard, SoundBlaster Audigy 2 (about 4 years old) was automatically installed and drivers automatically downloaded.

The sounds are pretty cool.

[hunkyboi69]

Yes, sound works fine. I've actually been running it on a Mac Pro for a couple of weeks now, which has Realtek audio.
What I had to do was download the latest Realtek High Definition audio driver, extract it, then install it through the device manager by using the 'Update drivers' function, as the installer program appeared not to work.
Ati Graphics was somewhat of an issue also, but the Vista ones actually install, I upgraded them to Catalyst 9.1 yesterday with 0 problems. :-)

[Brian]

@hunkyboi69

User error is to blame for your failures.

OS X is a solid operating system immune from your Windows viruses, malware, spyware, adware, vistaware, PCware and windowsware.

But if you would rather infect your Macbook Pro with Windows garbage, go right ahead -- it's your machine.

It is a real shame that you don't know how to properly operate a Mac.

[The_happy_switcher]

Why, oh why, would anyone want to contaminate a beautiful piece of hardware with Microsoft's junk?

[Brian]

Some people have JOBS at CNET and have to CREATE news.

[NRecob]

Hear! Hear! WHY waste your time/hard drive space etc etc on Windoze Vista II? I won't ;)

I waited 6 YEARS for that steaming pile of dog-**** (read: Vista) tried it, saw what a JOKE it was, switched to MAC and HAVEN'T LOOKED BACK :)

[pithenumber]

@NRecob
you obviously haven't tried Win7 Beta. It is far superior to OS X 10.5 and about as fast as XP, sometimes faster.

[Seaspray0]

Then don't look back. Go have fun on your computer. The rest of the world, however, is liking windows 7.

[massfat]

Why wait 6 years? Were you using ME? No wonder you hate Microsoft... ME sucked horribly, maybe you oughta try XP and Win7 'cause these are way better, and windows 7 has top performance of any OS MS has made. As for "beautiful hardware", since windows 7 is so beautifully powerful and amazing, it's obvious why people want to combine beauty with beauty.

[tenbosch]

@massfat - I'm still running Windows ME on a Toshiba Libretto 100 (original version of a 'Net'book) and it's still rockin away. Stable, stable, stable - including going into hibernate mode. It's been my night time web browsing computer since late 2000. Battery doesn't work anymore, which is the only thing bad about it.

[DouglasBubbletrousers]

Win7, a beta version at that, is better than OSX 10.5? Are you trying to be funny? I have Win7 on my iMac. I havent used Windows much over the past 3 years. Tried Vista in Parallels, used it very, very little. Seemed to be a piece of crap. Win7 looks much better, but to say at this point its better an 10.5 is a complete joke.

[unknown unknown]

@ tenbosch You are the first person I've come across to use stable to describe Windows ME.

[Brian]

@NRecob

Ya damn straight!

I used to be a Windoze uzer, but once you go Mac, you don't go back!

Why switch back when OS X (Leopard) works so well ??

[hunkyboi69]

Windows 7 x64 is far superior to Leopard, as is Windows Vista x64.
OS X is a big mess of OPENSTEP and FreeBSD hacked together that isn't even a native 64 bit operating system, it just pretends to be.

You can't even do simple things that you can do in Windows with ease, for instance, try setting ACL's on files from a UI on 10.5...guess what, you cannot. Try even changing your Window colour from that disgusting grey...oh, sorry, you can't do that either. Pray tell me, have they fixed AD binding and auth in Leopard yet? They hadn't by 10.5.2 when I gave up on it and went back to a proper operating system, Vista x64.

By the way, that runs amazingly well on a Mac Pro with 8GB of ram lol. :-)

OS X is a toy OS for fanboys to gloat about and be 'different', it might look 'different' (i'm not going to say nice as I hate grey), but it is style over substance and is no use for real world applications.

Win 7 x64 is rock solid stable and the issues it has are minor at most, as yet, I have found nothing showstopping which MS probably can't fix very quickly.

[erictbar]

I have installed Windows 7 on my iMac (17" Core Duo 1.83GHz), and my MacBook Pro (17" Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz), and have found only 1 minor problem.

I installed it on my iMac by upgrading from Vista, and all the drivers worked. I then used Winclone, a free 3rd party Mac app which is a must for anyone who wants to backup their Boot Camp partitions, or put the same Window copy on multiple Macs. I put this on my MacBook Pro. When I booted up my MacBook Pro, my trackpad had no gestures previously available using the Boot Camp drivers, but after waiting for Windows 7 to install the drivers automatically, Windows 7 worked fine on my MacBook Pro.

I haven't run into the audio issues that others have had. Apple's Windows Apps: Safari, iTunes and QuickTime, run fine in Windows 7 as far as I could test them. The only problem I found, is if you go to System Preferences > Startup Disk when OS X is running, Windows 7 will not show up. This is no problem on my MacBook Pro, as I never go there to switch OSes, I use the option key on startup. But I have a white iMac with an aluminum keyboard, and for whatever reason this keyboard will not work with white iMacs during startup. Which means every time I want to switch to Windows, I have to get out my old white keyboard and hold option.

[gp2792]

I installed Win7 via bootcamp on my mini as well with mixed results. Partitioning the HD with bootcamp threw one error after another. Ina's link to the install guide is helpful in getting around this, but in the end, I had to fully back up my mac install, reinstall osx, update to 10.5.6, partition the hd with bootcamp and install win7, then restore osx from my time machine backup...talk about a pain! And remember, this is from the OS that "just works".

Once the bootcamp issues were behind me, the OS install went fine and I didn't have the often reported sound issues most seem to have. However, getting bluetooth to work reliably with the apple wireless keyboard and mighty mouse was impossible. it would work for a while, then drop. I tried many suggestions found all over blogs, but nothing would work reliably.

Additionally, I have my mini hooked to an hdtv and used displayconfigx to handle the overscan in osx. Powerstrip is the tool of choice in windows, but be forewarned, the mini uses intel video cards...which powerstrip doesn't support. so the resulting display is either partially off screen, or if you reduce resolution, it doesn't fill the whole screen. Normal monitors are fine, of course.

However, with a normal (read non-apple) keyboard and mouse, the mini ran windows 7 just fine. Download the latest bootcamp drivers (2.1 I think) and your peripherals should work fine.

[massfat]

That sounds more like compatibility issues with Apple's software and hardware than MS's OS.

[gp2792]

I'd say it was a bluetooth driver issue for the bluetooth radio...not apple's fault really...it is a beta os that has been out for a couple weeks.

[gdieter1]

I downloaded the beta last night. Created a new VM under Fusion on my Mac Pro and Win7 installed itself in around 15 minutes from start to login - with no prompting other than an admin user/pw. Impressive. It's pretty snappy, but I haven't loaded any large apps on it yet. I gave the VM 2GB of RAM to play with. I was going to be really impressed - until I tried the new drag-to-maximize feature on the media player, and promptly got a BSOD. To be fair, it's beta, and Fusion isn't optimized for it yet, but going full screen in Fusion caused Win7 to reboot once, and in that instance, it got hung up and couldn't reboot back to the login. Still, when it -is- working, I found it considerably faster and easier to use than Vista. I'll probably be buying a copy to update my older PC when it goes retail. I never installed Vista at home, and I hope to skip that version altogether.

[kcotham]

Question: which would work best on an early 2008 Mac Book; the 64-bit or 32-bit version?

[pithenumber]

If you have 4 gigs of RAM, 64bit, if not, 32

[gp2792]

I would actually extend that to say anything over 3gb should be 64 bit...That's due to some hardware reservations that video cards and other pci devices reserve at the top end of the 32 bit limit as well as some bios issues. In other words, a 32 bit windows machine with 4 gb's of ram will often only see 3 gbs or slightly more. If the mb has memory mapping capability, you can get around this, but i am not sure if the mb's that macbooks use have that.

[kcotham]

Is that only true of Windows, or of Linux/Unix too? I've had no problems running 32 bit versions of Linux, yet.

[gp2792]

older bios' often don't recognize all 4 gb's. That's not a windows or linux issue, but usually flashing it to the newest version takes care of it...the hardware reservation issue is windows only, as far as I know. However, i am no linux expert.

[b_baggins]

On PowerPC the only advantage was more memory because of the architecture of the chip. But on Intel, 64 bit gives you better speed performance (again because of chip architecture), so go with the 64-bit version.

[suchinlee]

VirtualBox is the way to go. Why spend so much money on a virtualization software? I tried them all. VirtualBox is definitely on par with Parallels and VMWare. It is tad bit slow but it is very stable. If you don't plan to play Windows games using Direct3D then, VirtualBox is all you need.

[kostby]

I'm using (trying to use) Win7 on Parallels on my MacBook( Summer 2007, 2.16Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 120Gb hard disk) in Parallels 4.0.
The sound is fine, but the 'Experience Index' program hangs while optimizing video, and never runs to completion...

IMHO, Win7 performance is quite sucky compared to the same apps running under Win XP in Parallels. (spreadsheet, browser, word processor). It causes a definite drag on the OS X app performance, something that Win XP doesn't do.
I've also tried changing the default settings to 'application performance', which turns off fancy graphic effects, without noticeable improvement.

[georgemag]

I used the Coffeestops guide to installing Windows 7 on a Mac Book Pro (2008 Unibody) 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo of Awesomeness. It also recognized my new 24" LED Display too. I will now play World of Warcraft as it was meant to be played.

The guide is available here:
http://ourcoffeestops.com/2009/01/guide-windows-7-x64-build-7000-on-a-macbook-pro/

[jumpjetta]

What a waste of a Mini.

[megustansalchichas]

W7 should be VSP2

[homercles82]

I can't argue this anymore. You idiots saying Win7 is VSP2 are completely wrong and are Apple spiked latte drinking drones.

[Mark_Anderson]

That's like saying Snow Leopard should be OS X10.5.7.

Oh wait, I see your point.

[madh2h]

The Hard disk rating is low is not because of slow hard disk. Its because of bug in windows 7

Read more

http://itsmadh.blogspot.com/2009/01/windows-7-experience-index-data.html

[DrtyDogg]

Or it could be that it is a 4200 RPM notebook hard drive . . . Without following that article my hard drive scored a 5.9.

[MrZook]

I have a mac mini (1.8GHz 60gig HD 1gig ram) and I couldn't get Boot Camp to partition my drive. Kept telling me that files couldn't be moved... and the drive is only half full! Too bad 'cause I really wanted to test it on the mini.
Got it running on my Lenovo x61T tablet computer (2GHz, 100gig HD, 2gig ram) and it rocks. If I could get all my software running in Win7 I'd make it my primary boot and ditch Vista. I've had a some issues with screen orientations but the pen tools in Win7 work great. Anyone running a tablet should give it a go.
OH, and it works great connected to a HD tv... played some videos full screen and with minimal problems.

[gp2792]

I had the same issue. The link in the article helps with getting around this, however, it seems likely that you would have to go through the same thing i did:

1. full backup using time machine on an external drive
2. re-install osx from scratch, formatting the hd.
3. update osx to latest patch level
4. use bootcamp to partition your hd, this time it will work.
5. install windows 7
6. boot back into the osx dvd and restore your entire osx backup to the new, and smaller partition.
7. now you can dual boot to either os.

good luck, it's about a 4-5 hour job...

[MrZook]

4-5 hours... might not be worth it.

[ikramerica--2008]

yes, generally if you are planning on doing bootcamp, you should partition the drive as soon as you get the mac. otherwise, you need to clone your mac partition out (or use time machine), repartition from scratch, then clone the mac partition back in (or do the time machine restore).

[slinkysly]

I had this problem. I think Bootcamp uses empty space at the end of your partition to create a Windows partition. In my case I was using VirtuaBox and I suspect some of those files were near the end of the partition. As opposed to backing up everything and reinstalling try creating the smallest possible bootcamp partition you can then deleting it. You may find that in the process data has been moved and you can then create a larger bootcamp partition. I repeated this twice from memory. I can't remember exactly as I moved back to PC and sold the Mac. (That makes me an exception then ;-) ). But it did cause me grief initially.

The reason why this works I think is because Mac OS X manages file fragmentation automatically without having to have a dedicated defragmentor as is the case with Windows. Reducing the partition size then increasing it must 'force' some defragmentation to occur.

[SkateNY]

OK. I get it. Let's just try this for fun. Otherwise, why would anyone in his right mind want to run such and inferior OS on his/her Mac.

I've used both for my entire adult life. I've read most of the literature, the articles and now, the blogs.

Windows won the market share war, but I was able to retire at age 52 because of the Mac OS. And I'll never have to work again. Thank you Apple, and thank you Microsoft. Each of you contributed to my lifestyle.

[nitrous9200]

Here's why:
-It's important for developers to have access to the latest OS so they can test their hardware/software.
-If you are interested and want to test a product that you might be buying in the future.
-Some people (actually, millions) prefer Windows over mac OS, or just want to use both...and why not get the Beta which not only is free for now, but is a very good product even in it's current (unfinished) state?
I have yet to see a way in which Windows is "inferior" to Mac OS for any reason that the average home user can notice. I visit clients who have trouble with both (and one notable visit: 3 months after using the iMac his daughter got him for Christmas, he longed to completely switch back to Windows ...thank god for Boot Camp, otherwise he would have had hundreds of dollars of useless peripherals!)