I’m trying out Windows 7 on my old Intel-based iMac, and it’s going pretty well. One of the ways I’m doing this is with VirtualBox (a free, open-source virtualization tool from Sun).
I had some adventures, mostly stupid, getting it installed. But now it’s working, and mostly correctly… with some issues.
In general, Windows 7 is sprightly and responsive running in a child window on my 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel Mac. It hogs up most of my 2 Gb of RAM, and works the CPUs hard, but that’s good, I think. It takes just eight seconds, total, to start VirtualBox and restore the Windows session. Sweet!
Video playback is smooth, even when Windows is doing other things in the background like initializing a “Homegroup.”
But so far I haven’t been able to get a peep out of the sound card. Not so much as a bzzt. Windows says that “no audio devices are installed.”