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I'm thinking of installing Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro (early 2008) to get Office 2007 running on it. I have Office for Mac, but don't want to be having problems remembering key combinations or menu locations to do paste specials and the like. It may also make available other programs that haven't been ported to the Mac. That's my rationale...
The alternative would be to get a Windows laptop, but that'd use up more space.
Does anyone have any experience of using Windows 7 on an Apple, and how does it compare with running Windows 7 on a typical PC? Are there problems with drivers, lack of right button on the mousepad, other things?
I've heard that viruses can sneak through Windows 7, so I was wondering if it's possible to disable the wireless connection for Windows (eg, using VMWare Fusion).
Oh, and will I be able to do a full install on one Apple, and then transfer that install to another Apple if I end up replacing the first one? I'd just want to have one Windows licence on one machine...
Sorry for the barrage of questions...
why not just buy MS office for mac and run that?
Latest macuser has an article on running windoze - a few options.
The latest version of office for mac, has lots of stuff that wasn't in previous versions.
I'm a mac user and I work with colleagues on pcs. Very few problems and nowt that makes me use windows.
seems a lot of effort just to be able to run ms office
+1 for bigG though - why not just run mac on a mac with mac ms office?
I use Linux and open office which probably makes me a heretic or something
Or Open Office for the Mac.
Fair play that it's loads of effort to go the Windows route, but I like a surmountable challenge!
I do have Office for Mac 2008, and can manage with that myself but I don't do loads with it. I use Entourage a lot, and it seems to be designed to be awkward to use and it crashes lots.
I was also hoping to make it easier for my girlfriend to borrow my computer to do the odd bit of work on at the weekends (decent-sized laptop vs Windows netbook), without having a steep learning curve.
Latest version of Office for mac comes with outlook.
Other half uses VMWare Fusion with Windows 7 on her Macbook Pro.
It's appallingly slow on the internet and kills the Mac side of things too. It's like a new machine when Windows is shut down. I'd not recommend it, however, her Macbook Pro is my only experience of Mac so far, and to be honest, i'm not a fan. Just not nearly as fast as I had hoped (although I only use it for browsing the mincernet)
Fair play that it's loads of effort to go the Windows route, but I like a surmountable challenge!
I do have Office for Mac 2008, and can manage with that myself but I don't do loads with it. I use Entourage a lot, and it seems to be designed to be awkward to use and it crashes lots.
I was also hoping to make it easier for my girlfriend to borrow my computer to do the odd bit of work on at the weekends (decent-sized laptop vs Windows netbook), without having a steep learning curve.
I use macs here for all my design work I have a 2008 17 inch a mac pro and recently upgraded to the new sandy bridge version of the 15 inch MacBook pro I run boot camp only and not vm or parallels the new bootcamp 3.1 install was a doodle and it's fast under windows 7,still eats battery and gets warm. The bootcamp install was just a bit more diddly on the older MacBook due to drivers etc but still happy with it I use office but mainly run 3d cad on them the mac pro especially
buy a pc laptop?
Why on earth would you want to run Windows on a Mac ???? That's like putting ketchup onto your pate de foie gras ????
I wouldn't be contemplating running Windows on my Mac apart from the fact Microsoft had the genius idea of making the keyboard shortcuts for functions on Mac Office different to those on Windows Office (or just not bothering to have any shortcuts).
It may sound wrong, but I find it quicker to run certain steps using those shortcuts, and it'd make using Mac Office easier for my girlfriend.
Sorry NorthStar, the food analogy is lost on me 😉
I use VMWare fusion on my MB Pro with 4GB RAM and W7 runs fine alongside OSX. I can switch back and forward between the two machines, share files and directories between the two sides seamlessly too. I actually installed W7 on bootcamp, but very rarely actually boot into W7, I have just setup the bootcamp partition to be a VM available from within VMware.
I do a lot of application testing on W2008 server, and have test machines which I can fire up in Fusion. Couldnt work without it now. Just make sure you set the best available amount of RAM for the machine you are firing up. I always set the VM to have 2GB RAM, and only ever run one at a time.
Oh and I had Office for Mac 2008 previously and it was dire, but the new Office 2011 is a huge improvement, and almost as good as the Windows Office 2010
mmmmmm, it works, yes but i was never really that impressed tbph 🙁
EDIT: MS Windows on Mac OS
I'm running MS office 2011 on my macbook pro (luckily got a copy for £8 through a work scheme) and it's great. Let's me do work at home when I need to and is much more user friendly than my work HP laptop.
Really struggling to understand your reluctance to using office for mac. The "learning curve" isn't exactly steep is it?
Right, done it, not really worth it the trouble especially if you enjoy using OS X but just use bootcamp and a Win 7 license. Though if you buy Office, Win 7 and all you are almost in cheap laptop territory already so just buy one?
Alternative option is running iwork, I use this on my macbook pro, never had any problems with it. Excellent compatibility with microsoft office and windows. Its meant to be better than Office for mac too. Also cheaper
Why tf would you bother with VMware or the equivalent? Bootcamp, all the way.
Although a colleague has said that Windows is buggy as **** on his Mac, it could be because he's running XP rather than W7 on it.
Running W7 via bootcamp will be exactly the same as running a regular PC laptop - all native speed etc. You already have the laptop, so this would be one way to do it (and the Macbook Pro makes a very good windows laptop - all the drivers you need are on the OS X install disk which you pop in after you boot Windows for the first time and just let the install wizard handle it. It's really smooth, and all the bits will work (like webcam and the thermal management etc).
As others have said you could go the VMware Fusion/Parallels route - just make sure you have a lot of RAM. Low RAM will make both OSes struggle and it'll all go slow.
Your other choice is that since this is due to key commands, why not just change them? You can add Application specific shortcuts in System Prefs (Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts) so you could tweak them all to your liking in the Mac version of Office.
Use bootcamp -t'was easy, used to sell parallels for a living and although its a good idea in principle, my macbook pro 2.8 4gb ram struggles, boot camp surprisingly fast, only issue i have is i only use windows about once or twice a week, and every time it seems I have to do another 16 critical window security updates and restart again and again. But that wouldn't be such a problem if you used it more frequently.
Use bootcamp -t'was easy, used to sell parallels for a living and although its a good idea in principle, my macbook pro 2.8 4gb ram struggles
Really? I've been happily using Parallels 6 on my Macbook Pro 2.2 dual core / 4GB ram as well as the iMac at work for a good time now and neither have missed a beat with the exception of a dodgy release that messed with mouse clicking for a short while.
In fact all four of my VMs (XP and Windows 7) are faster and more reliable than the native installations installed on the HP and Dell pcs that I have for testing....
The only key difference is that you use the command key in Mac (key next to the space bar with the opened apple on it) instead of control in Windows. Everything else will be the same. (The combinations were originally designed for the Mac OS and there was a time when Mr Jobs used to bawl out Mr Gates for the deficiencies of his software!)
I have a mac mini now but had a mac book pro in my old job.
Run VMWare with Office 2007 inside an XP VM for day to day use, though I have images for windows 7 and server 2008 for work/playing around.
Never had any problems with VMWare on a mac. My job involves developing within a windows environment so dealing with virtual machines is a day to day occurrence for me anyway. Windows runs as fast for me as when installed on normal PC hardware.
I'd rather run office virtualised as IMHO Office for mac is crap, saying that I haven't seen the 2011 one yet but am unlikely to as I have the licenses for Windows.
I did see some comparisons before and in general Windows 7 will run better on Apple hardware through bootcamp then it will on a 'normal' PC. Never tried it myself though