Off Topic: Best Windows Emulator for Mac OS?

mark

This question has nothing to do with Isadora per se, but I'm wondering if people out there use Windows emulation software like Parallels or VMWare or? This will not be used for a media software, but for a simple book keeping program and word processing.

A couple of years ago, I tried Parallels once hoping that I could compile Isadora (not run it, just compile it) while still running Mac OS. But this really didn't work. It was frightfully slow.

What's your experience?

Thanks in Advance for the Help,

Mark

Skulpture

I used to have VMWare but it managed to steal 20gig of hard drive extra... I never managed to get it back; did all sorts even after uninstalling it it messed my old HD up. But that was 2/3 years ago now. Most mac users i've spoke to use parallels i'd say.

keftaparty

Hi,

I was using virtualbox under windows and linux to emulate windows machines. It runs also on OsX

I think ( If I'm right ) that the big plus of parallels is that you can use your windows session in parallels and also in BootCamp ( if anytime you want to use a GPU... ).

Fred

I had parallels on my retina for a while I was quite impressed, it was very smart, and did not seem so slow, however I always needed hardware and that was not an option, the reboot time on the machine was so fast it was not worth the messing around.

I have a trick for cross platform development, which is made easier with 2 machines. I use a cloud service, (but you could use github for the same effect but this requires interaction), to sync me working projects folder. From here I am using the same source files for all platforms and only the projects are different, once I complete some work on one machine I go to the other, the files are already updated, I compile and test on another platform. I do make it easier by using VNC to get to the second machine from my laptop so I still have one keyboard and screen I am not sure if any VM ware is really up to it yet but it would make the whole process faster.

Michel

Years ago I used Parallels and wasn't happy with it and then switched to vmware and its ok for my needs. Later I read lots of tests where parallels won over vmware. Now vmware is catching up agian.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-latest-virtualization-showdown-parallels-desktop-9-vs-vmware-fusion-6/4/

Best
Michel

fifou

I use parallels 9 for little missing osx applications with WinXP on my old MBP 2009 Core2Duo 2,4 GHz - OsX 10.6. It's pretty fast and smart, I even use TMPGEnc Mastering Works for some video encoding tasks. The smartest thing is that you don't have to create a NTFS partition somewhere, Parallels creates a file which is your Win partition and mount it when you need it. Mine is 5 Go for a basic Win XP operating system.

Best
Philippe