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Windows on Mac
I have been trying to switch to Mac for a few months now. I have wimped out and installed Windows XP via Boot Camp. (1) There are two programs that are really helpful to me that aren't available for Mac; (2) Everyone's favorite killer ap, Outlook, truly does not have a duplicate on Mac, please don't bother mentioning Entourage; (3) I have a lot of years of intense Windows experience with their file hierarchy, file movement, etc that I can't seem to escape. That said, I love the Mac side for movies, music, photos and the hardware is very cool.
Ok, sorry for all the explanation, its time to move past my IMac and get either a Mac Pro or a new WinTel machine. My question is this, will Windows XP work AS WELL (reliable, speed, etc) on Mac hardware as it will on Windows hardware (ie: Dell), given the same specs for processor, memory, vid card etc? Same question for Vista. I would either use Parallels or dedicate an internal hard drive to Windows using Boot Camp. Many thanks, bbkenney |
Originally Posted by bbkenney
(Post 10974361)
I have been trying to switch to Mac for a few months now. I have wimped out and installed Windows XP via Boot Camp. (1) There are two programs that are really helpful to me that aren't available for Mac; (2) Everyone's favorite killer ap, Outlook, truly does not have a duplicate on Mac, please don't bother mentioning Entourage; (3) I have a lot of years of intense Windows experience with their file hierarchy, file movement, etc that I can't seem to escape. That said, I love the Mac side for movies, music, photos and the hardware is very cool.
Ok, sorry for all the explanation, its time to move past my IMac and get either a Mac Pro or a new WinTel machine. My question is this, will Windows XP work AS WELL (reliable, speed, etc) on Mac hardware as it will on Windows hardware (ie: Dell), given the same specs for processor, memory, vid card etc? Same question for Vista. I would either use Parallels or dedicate an internal hard drive to Windows using Boot Camp. Many thanks, bbkenney No experience with Vista but I very routinely use XP on Macs. All of my Macs (desktop, Macbook and Macbook Air) use it. The only problem I have noticed is that Dragon Naturally Speaking is a bit slow on the Air. I havent noticed any problem with Outlook whatsoever. I have used Parallels but now use VMWare Fusion and like it a bit better. I recently had VM Fusion and XP64 installed on a tricked out Mac Pro to use with a Windows app requiring 8 gigs of RAM. Hoping to try it this week. That should be interesting. Bottom line is for most apps I doubt you could tell that you werent on a Dell. |
I recently switched from a Dell laptop to a macbook pro for my personal machine. My first reaction was similar to yours about working with windows outlook vs. working with the apple mail app. My favorite way to work with outlook was to open a large message window and then use the arrows to work through my mail. Neither the apple mail app or entourage allow you to do this. I ended up liking the apple app. better than entourage. Now that I am used to it, I quite like the use of the track pad to scroll through messages.....two fingers to scroll through a message and three fingers to advance to the previous or next message.
I am still using a few windows applications with windows XP. I use Quicken--the Mac application has nothing but bad press. I also use a couple of excel spread sheets that have macros (ms basic macros are not supported on the mac). I will probably run turbotax on windows, but the disk has both windows and mac applications included. VMware fusion is quite amazing. i was able to port over my whole Dell laptop, operating system, applications and all files to my mac. It runs windows at least as well as my dell laptop did, and actually seems more stable than my 3 year old Dell.. Most of the time I use the mac applications (mail,safari, ms office, etc.). I use windows as a virtual machine and can switch from any of the mac apps to windows pretty seamlessly and quickly. |
Originally Posted by mikel51
(Post 10974422)
I recently switched from a Dell laptop to a macbook pro for my personal machine. My first reaction was similar to yours about working with windows outlook vs. working with the apple mail app. My favorite way to work with outlook was to open a large message window and then use the arrows to work through my mail. Neither the apple mail app or entourage allow you to do this. I ended up liking the apple app. better than entourage. Now that I am used to it, I quite like the use of the track pad to scroll through messages.....two fingers to scroll through a message and three fingers to advance to the previous or next message.
I am still using a few windows applications with windows XP. I use Quicken--the Mac application has nothing but bad press. I also use a couple of excel spread sheets that have macros (ms basic macros are not supported on the mac). I will probably run turbotax on windows, but the disk has both windows and mac applications included. VMware fusion is quite amazing. i was able to port over my whole Dell laptop, operating system, applications and all files to my mac. It runs windows at least as well as my dell laptop did, and actually seems more stable than my 3 year old Dell.. Most of the time I use the mac applications (mail,safari, ms office, etc.). I use windows as a virtual machine and can switch from any of the mac apps to windows pretty seamlessly and quickly. |
I have a dual-boot going... two seperate hard drives...
one is XP Pro with Mac OS X able to be run inside Windows within a window... one is Mac OS X, with XP Pro running inside a window... I just select the OS I want when firing up the system... and if I temporarily need another OS, just fire it up inside the current running OS :) |
i run VMWare Fusion with XP on my Macbook Pro and it runs extremely well, better in fact than it runs on my Thinkpad. It's very cool to have both OSes running. I have an app that runs only under Windows so this works for me.
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Thanks everyone!
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