I like to put my PC versions of Memory Map and Tracklogs on my Intel MBP

I’m average ability IT wise so want to do it as simple as possible – I’m not uber ability and therefore don’t want to have some painfull reconfiguring process to go through…….preferably free though

Any ideas?

Thanks

Two (legal) free ways to do it, BootCamp and VirtualBox.

BootCamp allows you to dual boot, so you have to reboot to switch to Windows or back to OSX.

VirtualBox is similar to Fusion or Parallels but free. It runs windows as a mac application.

Virtual box is great for free.

Another vote for virtual box here.

Another option is Crossover Codeweavers Website – it claims to run perfectly. This thread has just reminded me to try it for myself as I’d love to be able to run MemoryMap without starting up a virtual machine.

Crossover is commercial but occasionally do free offers (I got a copy last week where they were giving it away free to celebrate the US elections) – or it’s built on the open source WINE project so you may be able to work something out using WINE.

Advantage of crossover is you don’t need a windows install as it has its own version of the windows API – other options all need an install of windows to run which is not free to do legally.

Virtual box is great for free.

Hmm. must try it.

DO NOT use Parallels. It’s a fine piece of software but each version only works with one release of OSX so each year when Apple release another, reasonably price – software update you get stung an extra £40 or £50 to get Parallels working again.

I was using Parallels for Tracklogs and to be honest I think you’re better off running in Bootcamp. Even with 4Gb of memory it was sluggish – I’m assuming becasause it has large image files and a lot of graphics work going on – so frustrating to use.

If I were you I’d get Memory Map and Tracklog versions for your Mac Book – if you ask them perhaps they’ll port them over for you without you having to re-purchase them. Even if you had to re-purchase them I think it would be money well spent.

Why create unecessary complexity ? a whole parallel reboot just to run memory maps ?

I’ve been Mac OS only for at least 5 years at home what a relief ! No more Windows garbage.

I use Crossover (which was free the other day for one day only 🙂 ) to run Memory Map so no Windows installation needed. The 3D view doesn’t work but I’m not sure I’m that bothered really. Seems to work fine apart from that.

Edit, ah just seen euain mentioned it already.

yep Virtualbox and don’t forget to install the extension pack

I run Memory Map on VirtualBox, works great!

Two issues with virtualbox (or indeed any “virtual machine” software, which is what it is):

1) All it does is create a machine within a machine, so you still need to install something on that machine which in your case would be Windows. So you still need a licensed copy of Windows and some kind of media ie the DVD.

2) Because you are running two machines at once, they both have to share your resources. So if you have a 4Gb Mac, you’ll have to allocate 2Gb of that to your windows VM (aka the guest OS) and 2Gb to the Mac itself (aka the host OS). This may not be enough for each OS to run nicely.

1) All it does is create a machine within a machine, so you still need to install something on that machine which in your case would be Windows. So you still need a licensed copy of Windows and some kind of media ie the DVD.

Aye, that was the big advantage of Crossover for me. CBA getting and installing a copy of Windows and taking up room on the HD etc.

2 gigs each to VM and host is way more than enough. No need to configure VM as a full-on machine spec, unless youre running lots and lots of guest apps lots of the time.

Think mine was running 384megs VM on a 2gig host, and funnily enough, some apps actually ran faster that way than they did with native OS on the same machine. Only chose 384, because I couldn’t decide between 256 and 512megs for the guest.

DO NOT use Parallels. It’s a fine piece of software but each version only works with one release of OSX so each year when Apple release another, reasonably price – software update you get stung an extra £40 or £50 to get Parallels working again.

I’ve been using Parallels for years, I can only remember it doing this once, with the upgrade to Mountain Lion. I think the speed also depends on the machine you’re running it on and how you configure your virtual machine. I’ve not had any speed problems.

To be honest though, unless you are switching between Windows & Mac OS X a lot then boot camp is the best way to go.

2 gigs each to VM and host is way more than enough.

It’s not a huge amount for W7. It still needs the same RAM as it would if it were on a standalone machine. I’m not saying it won’t work, but it’s something to bear in mind. You may end up with half as much as you would if you used bootcamp.

Virtual box with additions, you can set it up with shared mapped drives etc between your mac and the VM, which is handy for transferring files.

I was never sure about installing a AV on the windows XP VM but did for safety anyway.

DO NOT use Parallels. It’s a fine piece of software but each version only works with one release of OSX so each year when Apple release another, reasonably price – software update you get stung an extra £40 or £50 to get Parallels working again.

Funny – this has never happened to me. It also ran Dev Win8 happily enough too, long before win8 was released

Parallels can cause problems if you want to run the bootcamp partition within it. I haven’t been able to rectify that problem yet.

I’ve been using Parallels for years, I can only remember it doing this once, with the upgrade to Mountain Lion

Hmm. Looking at my emails. Looks like I bought
v 4 upgrade for £32 in Dec09. that qualified for a free upgrade to 5 based on when i bought it.
£28 for v6 in July 11
Which didn’t work on Mountain Lion a couple of months back.

I need to get windows on my mac but it is so that i can run solidworks. So far i have installed bootcamp that is on the machine and now need to put on a copy of windows but im not sure where to get windows from it needs to be vista or higher to be compatable with solidworks. Any help?

I need to get windows on my mac but it is so that i can run solidworks. So far i have installed bootcamp that is on the machine and now need to put on a copy of windows but im not sure where to get windows from it needs to be vista or higher to be compatable with solidworks. Any help?

Just go to a shop and buy it. Most computer shops sell it (even Tesco will sell you it if you go to a big one). If you’re a home user, it is not very expensive (about £40-100 I think), if you are business, it is about £150. There are various ways to get OEM versions, which are a bit cheaper. If you have an old windows disc for XP off a computer you don’t use any more, you might be able to use an ‘upgrade’ version.

Given solidworks costs about a million quid, and your mac cost you a fortune too, £100 for a windows licence doesn’t seem too bad.

Oh and if you’re a student, you can get windows for cheaper I think – about seventy quid or something.

If you have an old copy of windows there is a good deal on getting Windows 8 for about £20 at the moment.