14 DAY TRIAL // Dual Booting represents the way to go for many users who need both OS X and Windows, but do not want to be bogged down by having two machines when one will do. The Virtual PC solution also falls short of actually being a solution as it is typically so slow it borderlines a test of will to get any use out of it.
Booting Windows XP on the new Intel Macs means that Windows runs natively, so it?s just like having a second machine. But then the question has risen, just how fast does it work? The folks at Gearlog answered that by running a series of tests.
The MacBook Pro is the fastest Core Duo laptop they tested, faster than ?PC? laptops that were built to run Windows, in terms of running Photoshop scripts. The tests were made on four different Core Duo laptops, and the MacBook Pro outdid them all, which is a pretty good indicator of the performance of a native version of Photoshop.
The Desktop Macs, the iMac and Mini also fared well, outrunning even the most blazing fast single core systems. While they were not compared to other Core Duo desktop machines, they did test against a Polywell machine with a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+, against which the iMac competed well, however the Mini and Macbook Pro were slightly slower because of their slower drives.
The verdict is: Mac are fast Windows PCs, if you need them to be.