Settling in with Boot Camp

Submitted by Morbus Iff on Tue, 2006-04-11 09:19

I've been fiddling with Boot Camp on a MacBook Pro 2GHz since its release, and I'm ready to settle in: I can just expect games to work with all their gee-whizardry enabled and the highest widescreen resolution. Half-Life 2, Dungeon Siege II, Tomb Raider: Legend, and Oblivion: all working wonderfully. The one question remains: which of the zillion MMORPGs whose doors are now opened do I want to explore? (Yes, I play World of Warcraft, and yes, I do so only under OS X).

I've given up on the wireless connection for anything but casual online browsing or downloads (such as small patches) - various folks have suggested Windows XP's wireless capabilities are "flaky", and I've no real desire to fix it when I can wire into my router easily enough. Last night, I started a free trial of R.O.S.E. Online (which is at least entertaining enough to want me to play for a second day), and I'm debating City of Villains and this week's Auto Assault (though, fie!, do I wish there were demos).

My final notes on the Boot Camp experience (see my previous posts for more):

  • remapkey.exe, a utility that will allow you to remap keys (so that you can "Delete" on a MacBook Pro, where the existing Delete mimicks Backspace), isn't actually included in Windows XP, as I originally assumed. Instead, it's part of some Windows utility/resource pack, along with a bunch of other junk. Worried about hard drive space (see below), it's relatively easy to find a standalone copy of the .exe on Google, and I can confirm it does what it professes.
  • I originally chose 25 GB for the size of my Windows partition, so that I could read and write to it from OS X (where I'd be downloading demos and so forth whilst I accomplished real work). With three recent games installed, however, I'm already down to only 10 GB left, which is a bit less than I had hoped for. Granted, "how many games can you play at once?" and all, but still, a bit disconcerting. Hopefully Leopard has some way of writing NTFS filesystems.
  • Oddly, when I plug in my headphones to the MacBook Pro running Windows XP, sound will continue to spit out of the laptop speakers. I discovered this accidentally when I was kicked out of the local Borders - apparently, audio erotica is not appropriate whilst enjoying a tasty cheesecake at their cafe. Explanations that I was working on my memoirs, How I Learned Romance From Big Brown Riding Hoof, persuaded them little.

Any questions?

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