Windows on a mac?

A

AstroVol

500+ Posts
So our 1-year old daughter got Mrs. AV a macbook for Mother's Day/work (she desperately needed something). She loves most of the interface and apple software, but she needs to be able to run windows for some of their in-house software. I don't think any of it is a memory hog, mostly spreadsheet type programs.

I am somewhat knowledgeable of Windows/PC's, but I have no experience with macs at all. They have their own OS for macs, which makes me think she might have to partition the hard drive (which I doubt I would be able to do on a mac), but it would also mean she would have to re-boot every time she needed to toggle between programs. Surely there is an easier solution to this? Believe it or not, she took it into the apple store and the employees played completely dumb on the matter. I'm not a mac hater, it was probably just an isolated incident with a new/bad employee.

Any suggestions? Is there a special "apple" version of Windows I need to buy? I did a search of hornfans before I posted this, surprised it hasn't come up often.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
I've been using VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro for almost two years now. (Using the MBP at work and Windows is the occasional necessity.)

Fusion has been very good and stable. As mentioned above, no need to reboot -- under the VM model Windows becomes just another app, which you can close down when not needed and return RAM and other resources back to the Mac OS.

You don't need a special version of Windows to run under Fusion, you just install Windows after creating a virtual machine within Fusion. The process is easy. I run XP Pro so I don't know how good Vista or Windows 7 is right now, although I know Vista is supported under Fusion.

I have not used Parallels but I hear it is good too. Fusion definitely gets a strong recommendation from me, partly from experience and also because VMware has so much experience with this type of technology.
 
I appreciate the responses.

If I install the suggested software, do I still need to buy and install a copy of Windows to run the Windows-based applications, or does the suggested software allow this without actually buying and installing Windows?

I don't need "Windows" per se, I just need the ability to run Windows-based applications.
 
I use Fusion with XP and it works great for the couple of apps I need Windows for. You do need a legit copy of Windows, though. Maybe there's a way to use a copy of Windows you own, but I'm no Windows expert. If you know a UT student they might be able to get you a very cheap copy from Campus Computer.

If the spreadsheets are Excel compatible you should be able to run them in a Mac OS version of Office with no problem. I exchange Excel files between my Windows work PC and my home MacBook all the time with no issues. While I haven't done it, Apple's Numbers app or one of the open source office suites might work as well.

BTW, you have a very wise 1-year old daughter.
 
^And a very rich one, too...who now has a broke Dad..who is about to be more broke now that he...I mean she...has to buy a copy of Windows so that Mom can use her Mac.

Thanks again for the responses. For clarification, these are not MS Excel files she is using, they are a number of generic spreadsheet-looking programs used for logging/financial type stuff.
 
i've had great luck with parallels. you need windows versions of the apps you want to run on parallels. if you have a pc, you already have those.
 
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