Macintosh + FFXI

[Sarial]

Anyone use Mac and play FFXI? How does it work? I need a laptop. Right now I play on XP, and I really don't want Vista.

Any advice?

[_chuchu]

Stay on XP

[Sarial]

Can I still buy XP? Will I have to? I have a retail XP disc--not one that came with a PC. Will it activate on two PCs now?

[ShinseiRyu]

If you want to have a Mac and still play FFXI you can always load up bootcamp and dual-boot OS X and XP.

[Sarial]

I'd thought of that, but didn't know how good Bootcamp was.

[Scuzzelbutt]

I used a MacPro and a MacPro Book for FFXI. I used Vista and XP and both work fine although I prefer XP. I have tried the VMfusion and other progs but they are disappointing. Boot camp works perfectly for me and I will continue to use it for all my FF needs.

I also use the Xbox Controller for macros and movement.

[Jensken]

I'd thought of that, but didn't know how good Bootcamp was.

I just have FFXI + the essentials (firefox and avast) on my Windows XP Bootcamp partition, and it works better than any of the 3 non-Mac computers I've played on in the past.

[Sarial]

Do you pay for bootcamp, or is it free with the new OS Xs?

[Mayareira]

Boot Camp is free. All Macbooks that are being sold on the market right now runs the game perfectly.

[Sarial]

Hmmm. Think I might take the plunge and go Mac.

[Phraust]

A Mac is like an polished aluminum flat head screw driver, in a world full of philips' head screws. It looks nice, sure sometimes you can find screws that work with it, and sometimes you can force it in a philips screw, but you're always going to be better off just using a standard well made steel philips' head screw driver. Computers are tools, and tools are never the place to "be different".

Personally, I'd wait for Windows 7 to come out and see how it does if you wanted something different/newer than XP and that's not Vista. Try it now for free even.

Not saying Macs are completely worthless, just saying the novelty of constantly tweaking to get shit to work wears off, and the lack of game support and software support is leaps and bounds more annoying than viruses, which are almost entirely avoidable.

[Hosom]

Macs can work with FFXI. The best application I have heard of to run FFXI on a Mac with is Parallels. You don't have to dual boot.

Also, stop hating on people who consider something other than Windows, cause yeah, as a Windows user, do I even have to point out Windows ME?

Just because M$ charges ungodly amounts of money for its products doesn't make them any good.

[Akucaen]

Also, stop hating on people who consider something other than Windows, cause yeah, as a Windows user, do I even have to point out Windows ME? .

Since I spy the inner apple-fanboy at work, let me make another ignorant statement from the past:

...cause yeah, as a Mac user, do I even have to point out MacOS9?
(Unless you've already forgotten about it.)

[Isiolia]

Parallels or Fusion won't run FFXI at decently playable speed, at least not last I saw.

Boot Camp reboots the Mac into Windows. Performance is basically what you'd get from the same hardware from any other OEM. It does mean partitioning, rebooting to play a game, etc. But if you find you want/need Windows that much, just stay booted into it >_>

Virtual machines work nicely for non gaming applications though.

Activation can be a sticking point. If you have an OEM copy of XP now, then it likely won't activate when installed for Boot Camp. You can also run into issues if you want to use the same copy for a Virtual Machine, since the hardware list won't be the same. Easiest if you have a corporate copy that doesn't need to be activated >.>

Not saying Macs are completely worthless, just saying the novelty of constantly tweaking to get shit to work wears off

In the 13+ years I've been using Macs (alongside Windows, Linux, whatever), I can't say that "constantly tweaking" to get things to work has ever rung true for the platform. Usually it's the one that's the least true of.

[Mayareira]

Macs can work with FFXI. The best application I have heard of to run FFXI on a Mac with is Parallels. You don't have to dual boot.

Also, stop hating on people who consider something other than Windows, cause yeah, as a Windows user, do I even have to point out Windows ME?

Just because M$ charges ungodly amounts of money for its products doesn't make them any good.

This, hate the Mac stereotype around. I can't believe how people actually ask for a Microsoft monopoly that'll rape them all night long(I'd say the same for Macs, or any other monopoly situation). There wouldn't be a Windows 7 if Microsoft didn't have to compete with another OS in the market that's currently on rise.

As a user of both OS's, I am much more pleased with my Mac recently, especially after the announcement of 29$ Leopard > Snow Leopard upgrade.

Twenty Nine bucks. That's less than a crappy 2-year old budget videogame.

[Izzy]

Just because M$ charges ungodly amounts of money for its products doesn't make them any good.

What? This makes total sense, except that what I pay Apple $2500 for, I can build at hp.com for $1200. Both companies make their money by overcharging for shit. Microsoft can overcharge you because if you're not running Windows, you can't do shit. Apple overcharges you because if you don't own a Mac, you're "not cool".

If you really wanna play grand saviour of all money spending, build a custom PC and install Linux.

[Spider-Dan]

As a user of both OS's, I am much more pleased with my Mac recently, especially after the announcement of 29$ Leopard > Snow Leopard upgrade.

Twenty Nine bucks. That's less than a crappy 2-year old budget videogame.

This would be as opposed to the cost of, say, upgrading XP SP1 to SP2 (or SP2 -> SP3), which would set you back a whopping total of $0.00.

[Mayareira]

Mac OS X is a "line" of operating systems and snow leopard is an OS by itself, not a collection of updates and fixes(SP).

I'd toss in a bunch of sarcastic comments regarding the comparison of a patch and an OS, but its midnight and my jokes aren't funny at this time of the day.

A fair comparison would be a service pack vs. Mac OS X 10.6.1 > 10.6.2, but that'd be pretty idiotic one since they both happen to be free.

[bungiefan]

I'd thought of that, but didn't know how good Bootcamp was.

BootCamp runs Windows natively on your machine. Intel Macs are standard PCs, just running Mac OS. BootCamp makes a partition and installs drivers so you can reboot the machine into Windows and use the hardware in the machine. It's the same as running FFXI on a Windows PC with the same specs, because it is now a Windows PC with those specs.

Also, if you want to go XP, you'd better do it now. Microsoft is stopping issue of new XP registration codes at the end of this month. After that, you go Vista or wait for Windows 7.

[Spider-Dan]

So basically, Apple gets brownie points for calling their upgrades by different animal names?

XP SP1 -> SP2 is as substantial as any OSX point upgrade. By your logic, SP1 -> SP2 is "just a service pack" but Win95 -> Win98 is "an OS by itself", because they called it by a new name?

Whatever else you want to say about Microsoft, SP2 coming out as a free upgrade (instead of nickel-and-diming like Apple does) was A Big Deal.