Actually, I would not advise installing Vista on Parallels, I have had some problems with it. Also, are you sure your program will work on Vista? I’ve had a problem with some earlier programs not working on Vista.

VMware works great for me. It’s pretty transparent and works great for virtual windows. Both player and server are free for download from vmware.com.

Hi Cali, Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful information with us. I have been wanting to add windows to my Mac, but wasn’t sure how to do it and was afraid I would mess up something. I have a MacBook Pro and have purchased an external hard drive to put Windows on because I do want to keep Windows separate from my Mac hard drive. This information was priceless. Thank you again!

I love Geekbrief! Thanks for giving us all the incredible information.

Beth

Although I’ve had my MacBook for a while, I only have 1Gb of memory, so am not daring to run Windows in Parallels or VMWare.

It strikes me that by the time you have bought memory, Parallels, and a copy of Vista, you might as well go and buy a Dell laptop… depends if you need the portability or not I guess.

i use the MLS system here in south florida on a macbook running xp via parallels. it works flawlessly. as does wyldfyre if you are using that app. our online forms and contract system fo the state of florida works perfect this way as well. HOWEVER - you cannot use Firefox. IE 6 or 7 is a must for the online apps. They require extensive active-x controls and will not function in any browser other than IE. also - technically you open yourself up to all sorts of nasty stuff over there in peecee land… but if you patch it all up with the latest security updates and if all you are doing is opening up mls and running reports, etc. and not getting e-mail or browsing the web, XP is just fine! no need to upgrade to vista just yet. just make sure you patch it all up before enabling networking to avoid those worms and such! also - as always, get yourself a nice inexpensive router to put between you and the cable modem or dsl line (or fiber or whatever you have) and turn off universal play and play.

also - i have a macbook core2duo w/ 2gb ram. i have 512mb dedicated to that windows xp install. i have found 512 to be more than enough to do anything mls or contract related. this leaves 1.5gb for osx which again is plenty… so you really can run the two and not see any noticeable performance hit.

make sure to install the tools with parallels. this lets you run in coherence mode which gets windows out of your way unless you want it. i have my task bar on auto-hide at the top of my screen so from the mac side of things i just put my cursor up there and down pops the task bar with my quick launch icons. no need for a desktop! it’s wonderful.

hope that helps!

-d

I am not sure about Firefox on Windows, but i work with browsers a ton on OS X, and i have found that Safari is way faster than Firefox, i only use Firefox when i need the add-ons that it has.

I don’t have an intel mac, so i’ve never done it before, but I have done similar things between Linux and Windows. I think your safest option is to use bootcamp for windows so if it does get infected with something, it doesn’t cause problems in both sides. If you have a copy of xp around, I would probably use that instead of buying a copy of vista. Vista is really expensive, and it will take up about 10gb on your hard drive. Another option if you are just needing IE, is to try an emulator called “cross over” http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/ A friend of mine got IE working nicely on his macbook using it. Good luck whatever rout you choose!

I use a Mac at work with Parallels and Win XP and I want to correct a misleading statement. First, using Win XP on Parallels is actually safer than running Win XP in Boot Camp. Want proof? My XP instance has no virus protection, no firewall turned on, no spyware, and I don’t apply any patches (other than it is SP2) - and I’ve yet to be infected after 5 months. The reason? XP under Parallels uses a networking feature that basically places OS X as a shield in front of it much the same way a computer sits behind a router. I also use the Mac for email and the majority of my web surfing, leaving only trusted sites for surfing in XP. But, that’s not fool-proof, which leads to my second point. Parallels uses something called a virtual hard drive, which is nothing more than a single file in your OS X environment. This means that if you do happen to get XP infected, the infection is contained to the virtual disk file (unless you create a Share folder). Since it is a single file, it is very easy to back-up and the backup can be swapped with the infected virtual drive with a few simple file renames. Lastly, if all you need is minor access to Windows, 1gb RAM is enough. Give 256mb to Windows and turn off all the XP eye candy and single-tasking should be fine. The bottom line? Parallels is a fantastic option that is safer and more convenient than using Windows by itself.

netscape is the best browser ” Speed, Flexibility and More Security Choices Than Any Other Browser” theres a MAC and PC version its the best. Netscape was the first real browser and the firefox code is based on netscape because netscape released there code to mozilla (which was basicly set up by netscape) read wikipedia if you dont believe me just type netscape inn

Yes, the mozilla project started with netscape code, but as of version 6, netscape has been using the mozilla codebase. Check out: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/08/18/magazine/moz_aint_netscape.html

Also, version 8 is still not avalible for mac.

Here’s another link for information about mozilla and netscape: http://ilias.ca/MozillaNetscapeRelationship

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