Totalwar games on the Apple MacBook Pro

[Banquo's Ghost]

My life is now complete.

I have been an Apple user for some years now, with an aging Win PC uglying up the study for my beloved MTW and a few old games. When it became apparent that Apple was introducing Intel Core Duo chips into its new laptop line, I decided to invest in a new MacBook Pro. Just a week or so after buying, Apple produced the beta enabler Boot Camp, which allowed the MBP to boot into Windows XP as well as Mac OSX.

I sourced an OEM copy of Windows XP SP2 at a very reasonable rate, and this weekend had the chance to sit and install it. I thought I would share some tips in case anyone wants to follow suit.

You must upgrade your MBP firmware from the Apple site before starting and then download the Boot Camp software. This enabler will almost certainly be in the new release of OSX, Leopard, later in the year. I imagine because of the known hardware configuration, the install went flawlessly - once one thing was sorted out: unplug the Mighty Mouse if you have it, and ideally all USB peripherals save a keyboard. Bluetooth mice and keyboards won't work either, I understand. The reason for this, as I discovered, is that the MM particularly seems to disable the laptop keyboard, so XP will not respond in setup to keyboard commands - a bit of a downer. If, like me, you had never had to deal with a stuck CD before, you can eject it by holding the trackpad mouse button down at reboot.

Boot Camp partitions the drive easily - I chose 15 GB for the XP partition as I was planning to put games and games only on there. It prompts for a blank CD to write all the drivers to. Then you insert your XP disc (only SP2 will do) and away it goes. Just over one hour later, pop in the driver disc and it auto runs and installs all your drivers - the monitor suddenly looks gorgeous again, and Airport and Bluetooth work immediately. Being Windows, one has to go through the virus checker update and stuff as you would with a new install.

To switch between OS's hold the alt/option key at boot up. You can set the default OS in Control Panel (XP) or System Preferences (OSX).

First of all, I installed RTW. This was barely playable on my old PC and I wanted to see what it looked like for real. The install was straight and easy, and it looks lovely! Next MTW with VI and the XL mod.

MTW stalled on the first disc with an error message. Oh No! There was some problem with copying a file, which a suggestion on the Apothecary sorted out. Simply, I copied the first CD over to the hard drive and ran setup from there. The rest of the install went smoothly and now I have MTW running like a dream.

So I have the best of all worlds: A fantastic work computer running OSX with all its ease of use, security and portability, and a play partition with gorgeous graphics and MTW.

It's like Christmas!

[Lemur]

If this solution had existed five years ago, I would never have bought or built a PC. It was the unavailability of Fallout or Shogun on the Mac side that drew me into the Microsoft Borgsphere.

[lars573]

Boo Apple.

Yay Microsoft.

[Lemur]

Yay Microsoft.

Bash Apple all you like, nobody's going to give you any heat for it. But "Yay Microsoft"? That could get you tarred and feathered in plenty of Network Admin offices. Big fan of the Borg, are you?

[Papewaio]

Bash Apple all you like, nobody's going to give you any heat for it. But "Yay Microsoft"? That could get you tarred and feathered in plenty of Network Admin offices. Big fan of the Borg, are you?

Which is ironic as Mac is the ones who are their Programs on their OS on their Hardware and not really open to intergration. I say blame Mac for being so close minded that it created an MS dominated world.

[Lemur]

Pape? It's Linus Torvalds on the phone, and he wants his free, stable operating system back ...

[The Spartan (Returns)]

Boo Apple.

Yay Microsoft.

seconded.

[Lemur]

You guys are freaking me out.

[LeftEyeNine]

If this solution had existed five years ago, I would never have bought or built a PC. It was the unavailability of Fallout or Shogun on the Mac side that drew me into the Microsoft Borgsphere.

Uh-oh, I have a brother here.

Vault 15 welcomes you, vault dweller.

On Topic: In 3 weeks of my whole work life experience, I've seen that a Mac is a must for graphics design works. You open Corel Draw 12, double click an existing document, and if it is some rich document, you wait around 5 min. while opening and saving it.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I'm sorry, but Mac Lovers are pathetic.

"Ooh, look, i like Mac, because unlike Microsoft they're not a big horrible greedy company! Plus the computers look nice!"

Oh do be quiet. Mac is a small but still horrible greedy company. And in my opinion, the computers look awful.

[Banquo's Ghost]

I'm sorry, but Mac Lovers are pathetic.

"Ooh, look, i like Mac, because unlike Microsoft they're not a big horrible greedy company! Plus the computers look nice!"

Oh do be quiet. Mac is a small but still horrible greedy company. And in my opinion, the computers look awful.

Thank you for your constructive contribution to the thread. I will take your views under advisement and review my IT policy and personal tastes urgently.

[caravel]

I'm sorry, but Mac Lovers are pathetic.

"Ooh, look, i like Mac, because unlike Microsoft they're not a big horrible greedy company! Plus the computers look nice!"

Oh do be quiet. Mac is a small but still horrible greedy company. And in my opinion, the computers look awful.

There are a few apple users like this, and they do tend to be quite condescending, though to suggest that all apple users fit this gross generalisation is misinformed. What type of computer you use, it depends on what you're used to or what you've been exposed to combined with your type of occupation, I've been raised the MS DOS -> Win16 -> Win9x -> WinNT way so for it's difficult to adapt to a mac. Now that the latest Macs have Intel processors and the OS is now a type of Free/Net/OpenBSD UNIX, which many Linux/UNIX users are familiar with, it makes the mac much more accessible and viable.

[lars573]

More like there are a few who aren't. And the first computer I ever used was an 80's era Mac. But windows is better than Mac OS any day.

Bash Apple all you like, nobody's going to give you any heat for it. But "Yay Microsoft"? That could get you tarred and feathered in plenty of Network Admin offices. Big fan of the Borg, are you?

If a network isn't based on linux the admins should be fired.

[Lemur]

I'm sorry, but Mac Lovers are pathetic.

"Ooh, look, i like Mac, because unlike Microsoft they're not a big horrible greedy company! Plus the computers look nice!"

Oh do be quiet. Mac is a small but still horrible greedy company. And in my opinion, the computers look awful.

You're conflating two separate issues. Let's break them down, shall we?

(1) Yon't like Macs or Mac users. Well, that's your business. Some people don't like men who wear brown shoes. No accounting for taste.

(2) People who dislike Microsoft are myopic. And here I would suggest you have a long heart to heart with your sysadmin. There's a reason large operations that require stability don't run on Microsoft software. There's a reason that network admins and sysadmins reserve a small, cold part of their hearts for hating Microsoft.

If you don't understand this geek anger, just move along, nothing to see here.