Showing posts with label iMac. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iMac. Show all posts
Friday, 30 January 2015
Did someone say Mouse !?
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Would you like Mac with your Windows?
For convenience and to stop having to restart the iMac to get into Windows XP, I needed Parallels Desktop for Mac. This is a very smart piece of software. The retail box came with an old v3.0 build but you can just download and install the latest build - build 5582 at time of writing. Use the activation code from the boxed copy.
Considering what the program achieves in terms of emulating Windows XP within OS X and the complexities that must involve, the install pretty much sailed through (a bit surprising considering the horror stories in places like MacNN Forums). I chose to use the existing Boot Camp version of XP which it spotted and updated with its own drivers. XP needed activation again after installing, and then again after I'd rerun the Boot Camp version and gone back to Parallels. The last one was via the Microsoft automated telephone activation. Fortunately that did the trick - breathed sigh of relief.
The verdict - so its a bit slower in OS X but entirely usable, very well thought out and very convenient for quickly checking something under XP or running an XP only program. I discovered the drag and drop by accident, moving a file to the XP desktop rather than Mac wastebasket - fortunately it wasn't anything large like a DVD ;-)
Considering what the program achieves in terms of emulating Windows XP within OS X and the complexities that must involve, the install pretty much sailed through (a bit surprising considering the horror stories in places like MacNN Forums). I chose to use the existing Boot Camp version of XP which it spotted and updated with its own drivers. XP needed activation again after installing, and then again after I'd rerun the Boot Camp version and gone back to Parallels. The last one was via the Microsoft automated telephone activation. Fortunately that did the trick - breathed sigh of relief.
The verdict - so its a bit slower in OS X but entirely usable, very well thought out and very convenient for quickly checking something under XP or running an XP only program. I discovered the drag and drop by accident, moving a file to the XP desktop rather than Mac wastebasket - fortunately it wasn't anything large like a DVD ;-)
Monday, 31 December 2007
A kicking from iMac Boot Camp
So I spent the afternoon getting one of those nice shiny iMac 20" loaded up. Nice piece of kit, I could be tempted over the Wintel fence - but then I cheated and loaded the 10.5 Leopard upgrade with Boot Camp and fired up Windows XP Home. It feels quick even with some anti-virus loaded - I used AVG.
So the top tips for loading Boot Camp are, after starting the Boot Camp Assistant from Applications > Utilities and you're about to restart with the XP setup disc, make sure you've got a PC USB keyboard and mouse attached. I used a Dell set I had to hand. The Apple keyboard and mouse from the iMac aren't recognised by the Windows XP installer and you get stuck at the first Press Enter to Continue.
As you're going through the XP install you get an option to format the partition that the Boot Camp Assistant prepared or leave it unchanged. Choosing the unchanged option kept giving me 'disk error' when XP finished the first part of the install and went to restart. There's a note here.
To complicate matters further if you've set the partition to be larger than 32GB it will only format as NTFS. This isn't a problem for Boot Camp or XP but it will restrict you to read-only if you're subsequently viewing the XP partition from OS X. So I went back (again), removed, installed, chose the 32GB button and the install ran through smoothly. Don't forget to insert the Leopard CD once you're in Windows XP and all the relevant Apple drivers will load up.
BTW the Dell keyboard and mouse worked OK with the Mac/OS X so when you get stuck in a loop with the Disk Error, you can use the Alt key at startup to get back to OS X. Also holding the mouse button at startup ejects the CD.
So the top tips for loading Boot Camp are, after starting the Boot Camp Assistant from Applications > Utilities and you're about to restart with the XP setup disc, make sure you've got a PC USB keyboard and mouse attached. I used a Dell set I had to hand. The Apple keyboard and mouse from the iMac aren't recognised by the Windows XP installer and you get stuck at the first Press Enter to Continue.
As you're going through the XP install you get an option to format the partition that the Boot Camp Assistant prepared or leave it unchanged. Choosing the unchanged option kept giving me 'disk error' when XP finished the first part of the install and went to restart. There's a note here.
To complicate matters further if you've set the partition to be larger than 32GB it will only format as NTFS. This isn't a problem for Boot Camp or XP but it will restrict you to read-only if you're subsequently viewing the XP partition from OS X. So I went back (again), removed, installed, chose the 32GB button and the install ran through smoothly. Don't forget to insert the Leopard CD once you're in Windows XP and all the relevant Apple drivers will load up.
BTW the Dell keyboard and mouse worked OK with the Mac/OS X so when you get stuck in a loop with the Disk Error, you can use the Alt key at startup to get back to OS X. Also holding the mouse button at startup ejects the CD.
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