Re: Macbook OSX and Windows apps

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:23:56 -0000, " Gavsta" <gwilby@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello all,

First post to this group so please be kind ;)

I get my first ever Mac tommorow (a new Macbook to be precise) and although
I will mainly be using the device nativly, I will require to be able to run
Outlook to connect to my Exchange server. I have one or two questions about
this.

Okay, first off Entourage (part of MS Office for Mac, of which version
2008 is probably to be announced tomorrow) will attach to an Exchange
server. As will Apple Mail that comes free with the Mac, unless your
Exchange server is configured with certain AD features enabled.

If you must run Outlook itself, then carry on:

I know I can bootcamp the Mac, but I would really like to run a windows app
within OSX without having to run an entire VM or having to reboot. I
understand that Fusion can do this, but how effective actually is it?

You've got your terminology mixed up, so I'll define stuff first:

BootCamp is a tool to create a full Windows installation in a
partition on the hard drive. When you reboot into it, your Mac is a
real Windows machine.

Both VMWare Fusion and Parallels Workstation are OSX software that
allow you to run a virtual machine, made up of the Fusion/Parallels
software plus some rather large files on the Mac disk that act as
virtual hard drives for the VM.

(slightly confusingly, both Fusion and Parallels also allow you to use
the BootCamp disk partition as the hard drive for a virtual machine,
so you can run your BootCamp Windows install in a VM under OSX *or* by
rebooting, if you wish. There are annoying limitations though - you
can't just pause a VM BootCamp machine and shut down Parallels/
VMware.)

Okay. When you create a Windows VM with Parallels/VMware, any non-3D
application will run as happily as if it's running on a real Windows
machine. If you've used virtualisation software before, it's just the
same.

Parallels has better integration with OSX (things like being able to
associate Windows filetypes and URLtypes with OSX programs), VMware
has more premade VMs available and can swap VMs with other VMware
versions for Linux/Windows. For a personal machine, I'd recommend
Parallels (it comes with a converter to change VMware VMs into
Parallels ones too, but not back again).

There's also Crossover Office, a pay-for implementation of WINE for
OSX. I've no idea how it runs MSOffice/Win.

I could also do with some advice in regard to a newsreader (NNTP, not RSS),
and really open to any good advice that anyone would like to give me.

http://www.newsreaders.com/mac/clients.html

People here will tout Unison, MacSOUP, MT-Newsreader and Hogwasher. I
couldn't get on with any of them, as you can see from my headers... I
ran Agent under Crossover for a while, now under Parallels due to
having some Nokia software to run too.

Also, how well does OSX play in a Windows Domain?

Poorly. Natively it has no AD integration, just workgroup (it's using
Samba under the hood). It'll authenticate to another machine for
shared folders and printers and whatnot, but that's about all so if
your domain is locked down you're SOL. To get more, you need the
payware DAVE or AdmitMAC from http://www.thursby.com - or make your
virtual Windows machine a domain member.

Im pretty IT savvy (Im a server engineer) but solely used to the Windows
enviroment, so this is a bit of a new thing for me.

You'll love it. It's a cute Unix box. You just have to get over the
"Dammit, where are my options and twiddles!" and flow with it. Two
months along and you'll be gritting your teeth every time you use a
Windows machine.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. - Alexander Pope
.

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