iMac

[EL77]

Thinking of moving from a PC to an iMac and using Parallel for the windows element that i still need. Any opinions?

[Murph7355]

EL77 said:

Thinking of moving from a PC to an iMac and using Parallel for the windows element that i still need. Any opinions?

Plenty have done the same. Good move IMO.

You'll probably find you look for native MAc apps for the stuff you run on Windows (which software btw?).

[iAlex]

You'll find you use windows less and less as time goes by. An excellent move.

[Original Poster]

As above, you will not regret the switchover!

[drgav2005]

Ditto!

I'm currently waiting on my 2nd iMac to arrive… The 1st one I bought is so bloody good I can't get the kids off it I'd been using Windows based PCs for 18 years and changed to the dark side last year… best (computing) move I've made!

[TimmyWimmyWoo]

A good move! I've had my Mac/been using macs daily for just over 2 years now having been an ardent windows/DOS user since 1990ish. Wouldn't go back now, and I deleted my Boot Camp partition last week. OK, I needed the space but it's still a step further away from Windows…

That said, Windows 7 is much better than any previous versions, in my limited experience.

But I use a 24" iMac every day for work and it's a great thing to work on.

[cjs]

EL77 said:

Thinking of moving from a PC to an iMac and using Parallel for the windows element that i still need. Any opinions?

Have a look at VM Ware Fusion as an alternative to Parallels.

http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

[...Mole...]

What do you need Parallels for?, I had a Macbook Pro and whilst I had a bootcamp partition I tried to use parallels for 3D work so I could use stuff in OSX at the same time and it did not run well at all. It got to the point where I was using it in Windows constantly, so I ended up giving it to my OH and moving back to PC's and building myself a nice desktop PC.

This was a 15" Macbook Pro with the 2.26Ghz Core2Duo and 4GB of Ram.

[x5x3]

I use parallels to run and build Windows XP VMs and it is fine, it enables me to use the kit I want (i.e. Mac) but still be able to work. As the prior poster said though, there is an overhead in running a VM so it may depend on what sort of thing you want to do? I have bootcamp and a native XP partition on the family iMac so the kids can play their old games, VMs are not good for playing games.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

or VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ for a free solution that's still good.

[Cuchillo]

Anyone tried running things like Visual Studio and SQL Server in a "window" on an iMac/MBP?

[dxg]

Cuchillo said:

Anyone tried running things like Visual Studio and SQL Server in a "window" on an iMac/MBP?

I run Revit in Parallels. Not the same type of application but certainly one that makes a lot of demands. Obviously not quite as fast a running on a real machine, but perfectly fine. Never crashes, which is the main thing, so I have never lost work. I just switch it to full screen (for the screen real estate) and work away...