While I was trying to install Parallels on a customer's Macbook Pro with a French keyboard I ran into two issues. I would like to share how I solved these two issues related to French localization and I hope somebody who has found a better solution will let me know: 1) After initial installation of Windows XP and Office 2003 the printer attached to the Macbook Pro would not print correctly the French accents (so it did print but not everything correctly). All specific French letters were wrongly mapped to other letters. Solution: After having tried all kind of ideas I activated Printer Sharing in Mac OS X on my MBP, then I installed Bonjour for Windows (http://www.apple.com/support/bonjour/). Then in Windows XP I ran Bonjour Assistant and I chose to connect to my printer "CanonPrinter@MyComputer". For this printer Bonjour automatically suggests "Generic Postscript" as the correct driver, not the Canon printer driver. Leave it as "Generic Postscript"! And presto! Now I print to the Canon printer via Bonjour instead of the default "HP Color LaserJet 8500 PS" and all accents are appearing perfect! 2) The keyboard mapping of a French MacbookPro is not correct. '@'; '_', '!' and many more letters are assigned to other keys on the keyboard. Solution: The only way I found to solve this is to change the keyboard mapping completely. Download the correct zip file from the Virtualbox Forum (http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1871, kudos to user Julou). Run the SetUp program from Windows XP. This installs a new keyboard mapping for the 'French (France)' language. To activate this go to Control Panel -> Regional and Language -> Languages -> Details. Under 'Installed Services' you can now remove the original French keyboard map (you can reinstall it later with a click) and leave only the "Français - MacBook Pro". Now every time you choose French as you language and the keyboard as input you will have a correctly mapped keyboard. Only difference: The key for '@' (second row, left of the key for '&') is exchanged with the key '<' (last row, next to 'w')? Not a big problem. Let me know if you have a better idea. And let me ask a question: Why the heck doesn't Parallels offer this kind of keyboard map as part of the installation package. It shouldn't be up to a user like me to sort this out. It feels wrong. Best regards Valentin.
