AAUG Reviews

by Diane Petersen, AAUG Member

I hear it over and over from die hard Mac users. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it my self. “Why would you ever want to run Windows on your Mac? Are you crazy?” Knowledge is power, people! It pays to be “multilingual” in the computing world. Whether it is to experiment and learn from an academic viewpoint, or to run that one piece of “niche” software you just HAVE to use, virtualization is your way to have your Mac and eat it too. Well, maybe not literally, although Apples are quite tasty.
We have many options at our disposal. And I have used some of those. There was a PowerPC option that…well, it worked, sort of. Now that we have an Intel platform on the newest models a myriad of solutions are available. The one I am focusing on is Parallels by SWSoft. It has been a front runner and previously our only true virtualization solution.

I had been a steadfast user of “another solution” until I had the opportunity to review this product. I take this from the standpoint of a brand new Windows user. Imagine a pure and simple Mac, without Windows to complicate things…yet. But my MacBook Pro is tough, so tough I heard it can run Vista faster than any other laptop on the market (see for details.) The install of the Parallels software was seamless (once I completely eliminated all traces of a prior installation.) I had a Windows XP license laying around unused, so I used that for my installation. Parallels users must calculate into the cost of running an alternate operating system the outlay for the operating system being installed (Windows Vista Home Basic, $150.99, amazon.com). Prior users of a PPC partition have the ability to import that image, but I simply used the disk to create a Windows XP install disk and effortlessly installed XP. (more…)

by Richard Geiger, AAUG Member

Parallels Desktop for Mac uses a virtualization technology that you can run Mac OS X and Windows, Linux and more side-by-side with your Mac OS on any Inlet-powered Mac with out having to reboot. The reason I wanted to run Windows on the Mac was because I use Garmin eTrex Vista GPS which requires Windows in order to run the software. Garmin has stated they want to support the Mac Platform but they have only a few GPS models that do. I also do web design and wanted to test web sites using a Windows Machine. Sometimes I run into website that will not work with Safari or Firefox on the Mac platform such as some government sites so then I use Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer. I also have a Dell computer running Microsoft Windows 98 and I wanted a newer machine.

I tested Parallels desktop on a Mac Book Pro 15 inch with 2 GB of memory and a 100 GB hard drive. I found parallels program easy to install and did not have any problems. I choose to install Window XP Professional on my computer instead of Window Vista because of the problems people were having with Vista. In addition my older GPS unit was supported by Windows XP and I was not sure about Vista.

I had a problem trying to install Windows because Parallels did not recognize my DVD/CD drive. The Parallels manual said to use Mac OS Disk Utilities to create a disk image if Parallels did not recognize the DVD/CD. I had problems creating the disk image since the Parallel’s directions were very short and not clear what to do. (more…)