iMac and Win7.
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You can spend a lot less money and just get a laptop with Windows already on it.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
I was in a local Apple store and saw one hosting both Leopard and Win7 operating systems. The salesman showed me Win 7 on it and it looked like it runs ok. I've been thinking of getting an iMac for a while and the real clincher is how well VS and SQL Server run. I don't want to start a "why would you want to run Win7 on an iMac" thread as I'd rather ask for anyone's personal experience of using both. I'm not clear as to how you run both and if you can run both at the same time? That is, use the Apple stuff for some things and then switch to another window where Win7 is running. That way, I can go from one to the other without having to reboot. Is that possible to do or must I have a dual boot installation as the only way of doing what I'd like to do? If you guys in the know could give me some hands-on observations I'd appreciate it. I's possible that what the salesman showed me involved a lot of jiggery-pokery which took a while to setup. From what I understand iMacs are less sensitive to installation problems that sometimes plague Windows? Perhaps another way of asking it, is there any reason that I should not get an iMac? :)
I do all my development on a MacBook Air (the original from 2008). Original I used Boot Camp (supplied free by Apple) to switch between Windows and OS-X but after about a two months of never booting into OS-X I removed it and now only have Windows 7 on it. Had no problems at all with Windows, Apple even supplies all the drivers. The only problem I had with the laptop was hardware related. The hinge broke, which is a common problem for the first generation Air, so took it to the local Mac store and they fixed it no problems, didn't matter that it was running Windows.
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I was in a local Apple store and saw one hosting both Leopard and Win7 operating systems. The salesman showed me Win 7 on it and it looked like it runs ok. I've been thinking of getting an iMac for a while and the real clincher is how well VS and SQL Server run. I don't want to start a "why would you want to run Win7 on an iMac" thread as I'd rather ask for anyone's personal experience of using both. I'm not clear as to how you run both and if you can run both at the same time? That is, use the Apple stuff for some things and then switch to another window where Win7 is running. That way, I can go from one to the other without having to reboot. Is that possible to do or must I have a dual boot installation as the only way of doing what I'd like to do? If you guys in the know could give me some hands-on observations I'd appreciate it. I's possible that what the salesman showed me involved a lot of jiggery-pokery which took a while to setup. From what I understand iMacs are less sensitive to installation problems that sometimes plague Windows? Perhaps another way of asking it, is there any reason that I should not get an iMac? :)
I have a mac pro tower and run Mac OS 10.5, Windows Vista and Windows XP, all with out any hassle at all. Check out http://refit.sourceforge.net/[^] this is what I use to control the boot menu. In terms of installing windows, the only thing you need to do differently, is that *after* you've installed windows, you'll run Apple's device drive installer for all the little extras that they provide for things specific to the mac hardware. Other than that, it's just another PC install.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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They all look the same to me... :) And in that case, he can get a really fancy laptop (or an even fancier desktop machine).
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
I have a mac pro tower and run Mac OS 10.5, Windows Vista and Windows XP, all with out any hassle at all. Check out http://refit.sourceforge.net/[^] this is what I use to control the boot menu. In terms of installing windows, the only thing you need to do differently, is that *after* you've installed windows, you'll run Apple's device drive installer for all the little extras that they provide for things specific to the mac hardware. Other than that, it's just another PC install.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Thank you gentlemen. Your comments are helpful. Drifting to another topic on iMacs, how easy do you find Apple's mouse and keyboard? The mouse seems to use gestures as its mode of operation and the keyboard seems almost to sleek and fragile to want to touch it which kind of defeats the purpose of having one! I know the iMac has 4 usb slots on the rear so could I use my chunky mouse and pc-style keyboard, overriding Apple's if I want to, at least until I can get used to it? My pudgy fingers are obviously pc-damaged and expect to find two buttons and a scroll wheel.:~
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Thank you gentlemen. Your comments are helpful. Drifting to another topic on iMacs, how easy do you find Apple's mouse and keyboard? The mouse seems to use gestures as its mode of operation and the keyboard seems almost to sleek and fragile to want to touch it which kind of defeats the purpose of having one! I know the iMac has 4 usb slots on the rear so could I use my chunky mouse and pc-style keyboard, overriding Apple's if I want to, at least until I can get used to it? My pudgy fingers are obviously pc-damaged and expect to find two buttons and a scroll wheel.:~
Well it's kind of a toss up. Personally neither one bother me much, I'm using the default apple keyboard and mouse that came with the Mac Pro. I'm OK with them, but it really wouldn't make much difference to me if they got swapped out. You can always swap them out for whatever you're more comfortable with.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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I was in a local Apple store and saw one hosting both Leopard and Win7 operating systems. The salesman showed me Win 7 on it and it looked like it runs ok. I've been thinking of getting an iMac for a while and the real clincher is how well VS and SQL Server run. I don't want to start a "why would you want to run Win7 on an iMac" thread as I'd rather ask for anyone's personal experience of using both. I'm not clear as to how you run both and if you can run both at the same time? That is, use the Apple stuff for some things and then switch to another window where Win7 is running. That way, I can go from one to the other without having to reboot. Is that possible to do or must I have a dual boot installation as the only way of doing what I'd like to do? If you guys in the know could give me some hands-on observations I'd appreciate it. I's possible that what the salesman showed me involved a lot of jiggery-pokery which took a while to setup. From what I understand iMacs are less sensitive to installation problems that sometimes plague Windows? Perhaps another way of asking it, is there any reason that I should not get an iMac? :)
Option 1 - Bootcamp will let you boot to either OSX or WinWhatever, so you pick your OS for the session and run it. Pros: Win is running native and it's fast. Cons: You just bought a really expensive set of hardware to run Windoze, and you can only run one OS at a time (I think -- this is not how I've got my system set up). Option 2 - VMware (or Parallels) will let you run your Windows instance as a virtual machine. Two options there as well: 2a - Boot the win system and run all apps internally to the Windows session (this is the way I run mine, using VMware). 2b - run each app virtually so it looks like it's running by itself, but is really running in a VM. Pros: Both OS's are running at the same time, so you can use whatever you want from each, as you need it. Cons: The Win instance is virtualized and definitely runs slower than it could if it were running native. I was able to launch Steam and COD:BO in the virtual, but it was totally unplayable (seconds per frame!). But graphics-intensive stuff can be somewhat of a problem on VMs. That said, I've been a Windows user/admin for most of my career, and this is my first foray into using my own OSX machine. I've also been running a Fedora Core instance with Oracle 11g in another VM, and I've been able to have both the Oracle and WinXP systems running at the same time, essentially giving me a little heterogeneous "network" with Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX all running at the same time. There's some more info over at StackOverflow on running VS on a Mac you might find useful as well.
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Thank you gentlemen. Your comments are helpful. Drifting to another topic on iMacs, how easy do you find Apple's mouse and keyboard? The mouse seems to use gestures as its mode of operation and the keyboard seems almost to sleek and fragile to want to touch it which kind of defeats the purpose of having one! I know the iMac has 4 usb slots on the rear so could I use my chunky mouse and pc-style keyboard, overriding Apple's if I want to, at least until I can get used to it? My pudgy fingers are obviously pc-damaged and expect to find two buttons and a scroll wheel.:~
I'm not as big of a fan of the keyboard. I kinda have to mash on the caps lock to get it to engage. And it took me a while to get used to having the metal grid around all the keys. For a while, I was typing near the edge of the keys and having my finger run into the grid before the keystroke registered. I've gotten used to that by now. The biggie for me though is that I constantly get confused between the function of the CTRL key on Windows and the COMMAND key on the Mac. For instance, CTRL-T opens a new tab in FireFox on the PC, but you have to hit COMMAND-T on the Mac. Also the Mac doesn't have a "Delete" key, so I'm finding my text editing is a bit strained. On the other hand, I think they nailed it with the new Magic Trackpad. Multi-finger gestures and I've gotten quite comfortable with cursor positioning, left-click, right-click, scrolling, paging, etc. This is the way trackpads were meant to behave. I've had to sit down with a Win laptop, with the old-style trackpads that have a couple physical buttons, and couldn't stand it! I got a Magic Mouse when I first bought the machine. It works, and it works well, but I'm finding I'm not using it very much -- the onboard trackpad is just that good, and it's not terribly convenient from the couch. I picked up the Apple Blutooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad so I can control the laptop when it's plugged into my TV, and the keyboard also works with my iPod Touch and the iPhone, and it should work with an iPad as well (assuming they're all running iOS 4.x -- I forget which version of the OS included BT drivers). The usefulness of the keyboard on all the iOS devices balances out the things I'm less satisfied with.
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I was in a local Apple store and saw one hosting both Leopard and Win7 operating systems. The salesman showed me Win 7 on it and it looked like it runs ok. I've been thinking of getting an iMac for a while and the real clincher is how well VS and SQL Server run. I don't want to start a "why would you want to run Win7 on an iMac" thread as I'd rather ask for anyone's personal experience of using both. I'm not clear as to how you run both and if you can run both at the same time? That is, use the Apple stuff for some things and then switch to another window where Win7 is running. That way, I can go from one to the other without having to reboot. Is that possible to do or must I have a dual boot installation as the only way of doing what I'd like to do? If you guys in the know could give me some hands-on observations I'd appreciate it. I's possible that what the salesman showed me involved a lot of jiggery-pokery which took a while to setup. From what I understand iMacs are less sensitive to installation problems that sometimes plague Windows? Perhaps another way of asking it, is there any reason that I should not get an iMac? :)
I have a 27" mac running Win 7 with VS 2010 - more as an experiment than as my workaday machine. And it's fine. You have a choice as to booting either Mac OS or win 7 - so it's just plain old dual boot using BootCamp - or using one of the VMWare / Parallels / Virtual Box I use Virtual Box (because it's free) And it has an 'integrated' mode which makes it appear as if you're just running your windows apps on a Mac - and it works very well. My next PC will almost certainly be another Mac which will be used for my main machine - so Vs, SQL server etc Oh - and set up for Virtual Box involved downloading and installing it, running it, adding a virtual machine and installing Windows on it (you can, of course, install other OSes too. And the fact that you can "save" a machine state is cool too - so you can have several different versions of the same OS - say one with older browsers for testing web sites So, no, there's no reason you shouldn't get an iMac. You can even play Half Life 2 on it! I don't recall any Jiggery, and certainly no Pokery
MVVM# - See how I did MVVM my way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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I have a 27" mac running Win 7 with VS 2010 - more as an experiment than as my workaday machine. And it's fine. You have a choice as to booting either Mac OS or win 7 - so it's just plain old dual boot using BootCamp - or using one of the VMWare / Parallels / Virtual Box I use Virtual Box (because it's free) And it has an 'integrated' mode which makes it appear as if you're just running your windows apps on a Mac - and it works very well. My next PC will almost certainly be another Mac which will be used for my main machine - so Vs, SQL server etc Oh - and set up for Virtual Box involved downloading and installing it, running it, adding a virtual machine and installing Windows on it (you can, of course, install other OSes too. And the fact that you can "save" a machine state is cool too - so you can have several different versions of the same OS - say one with older browsers for testing web sites So, no, there's no reason you shouldn't get an iMac. You can even play Half Life 2 on it! I don't recall any Jiggery, and certainly no Pokery
MVVM# - See how I did MVVM my way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
Thanks for the feedback on vmware, etc, especially HL2! Now...all I need to do is to go online and spec the machine and buy it. It's a sort of present from my wife, so I'll add up all the 1000's she's spent on food and clothes over the past few years and come to an equitable figure. :-D
