First Mac in the office...

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by Stecchino, Mar 20, 2009.

  1. Stecchino

    Stecchino Bit poster

    Messages:
    3
    ...I'll be using the first Mac in our 23 person office and will need a solution like Parallels to run certain Windows-only apps for the foreseeable future.

    Any issues or potential roadblocks that would hinder our efforts? Specifically, does a Windows guest OS have any problem connecting and logging into an existing Windows Server 2003 network with Microsoft Exchange and various SQL databases, etc used for our CRM application? Stuff like that.

    Any thoughts you can share is much appreciated.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2009
  2. spike1911

    spike1911 Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    Doing a clean install from a Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD works very well. Upgrade to SP3 as recommended by windows itself later on.

    I am running Parallels since version 1 to use it with office, Visual Studio (.NET development) and Oracle's windows only development tools and even an Oracle DB (10gR2 and 11) without any trouble. JUST DON'T install windows crapware (all those little "gizmos" in the taskbar) add-ons into your VM keep it clean and it will perform VERY WELL.
    All i have installed there is QuickKeys and AVG antivirus that's it.

    All other work i do directly in Mac OS x (terminal, bash, perl, java, Xcode for C and C++)

    Migrating an existing physical machine MAY work as well but due to drivers and hardware concerns i would not heavily recommend that (that's a typical windows not mac or parallels thing).

    Things that should be deinstalled before migration (i discovered when migrating from Parallels 3 to 4)

    DAEMON TOOLS - they broke the IDE driver atapi.sys :-O
     
  3. Marcelino Guel

    Marcelino Guel Bit poster

    Messages:
    5
    I've been using Parallels since version 3.0, and now I use version 4.0 on two Macs.

    I would suggest doing a fresh intall of Windows, instead of the migration...

    Also, I use Exchange, SQL, and Microsoft's CRM tool with no problems.
     
  4. wdcurry

    wdcurry Member

    Messages:
    33
    I would strongly suggest reading the threads on the current copy and paste fiasco before taking the plunge. Analyze how you will interact with the mac and the windows o/s. If you are trying to use as much of the mac as possible, and you tend to do a lot of copy and pasting, you will find yourself horribly frustrated. hth, drew..
     

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