Windows 7 on a Mac Mini

Discussion in 'macOS' started by RACERPRO, Jan 29, 2009.

  1. RACERPRO

    RACERPRO MDL Senior Member

    Feb 13, 2008
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    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.

    source: news.cnet.com