WindoMacUsers....

Gambuchi

Gambuchi

Purveyor of Thought...
This is the best forum
That's why I am taking a survey and praying that you, the supportive members of this forum, will take a moment and email me your answers.

I need (want really) to find out how many of you are/have bought one of the new Intel/Mac machines and actually run Windows and OSX on them. What are your successes and what are the failures that you've encountered. My Church wants to replace the secretary's Dell and would love to do so with a Intel/Mac if and only if she can still use the Windows based apps. I am doing the survey because they don't want to use VPC to run the apps. (I know, who in their right mind wants anything to do with windows). I use a Powerbook G4 and refuse to ever run Windows again (after 20 odd painstaking years) of trying to keep a PC up and running minus the omni-typical "Internet Explorer has..." you know the routine.

Anyway if ya got a minute let me know and I will forward your thoughts, gripes, convictions etc. to the Procurement committee folks.

(I tried to get them to get her Apple software but some of the programs are explicitly written for Windows machines).

My email:
gambuchi@gmail.com

Thanks guys and gals,

Dennis
 
If it's going to be used in a church, I wouldn't even attempt doing this since it's not even officially supported by Apple. Also, a lot of people have been "bricking" their Intel Macs in attempting to do this while mucking around in EFI, meaning that they won't boot back into Mac OS X.

If the church is hell-bent ::ha:: on having a Windows computer, why not just get them a Windows computer? I understand how difficult it can be for some churches to replace all the software they've invested in. Even though I would normally recommend a Mac, this is one situation I wouldn't unless they were willing to replace all of their software or run it in VPC. In all honesty, I don't know what they are using that would require the performance power of an actual PC that couldn't be done in Virtual PC or some other Windows emulation environment on a Macintosh.

If they are open to getting an Intel Mac, then try and sell them on the security of OS X and provide a scalability plan. Remind them that the good thing about the Intel Macs are that any emulation of Windows will have significant speed increases since they aren't translating code from x86 to PPC. It's all x86! It still might not be as fast as running Windows natively on an actual PC, but it's definitely going to be faster than it currently is. Right now I don't know of anything available, but that should soon change with the renewed relationship between Apple and MS. Also, they can begin to slowly migrate their apps to native OS X versions over time as the software becomes obsolete. This way, they eventually won't need the emulated environment and can run all their apps ultimately in a more robust and secure operating system environment.

Good luck!
 
I have to agree with nixgeek here -- if you want to run Windows, purchasing an Intel-based Macintosh would be a step backward. From what I gather, running Windows applications is actually easier on a PPC-based Macintosh, since VirtualPC won't run on the new Intel Macs, and running Windows on the new Intel Macs is a no-go so far without serious hacking and risk.

VirtualPC should run decently on any modern PPC-based Macintosh, but if she's going to be working with Windows programs all day, then it would just be frustrating. A true-blue Windows computer would be more tolerable to work on rather than a Macintosh running VirtualPC.

Like nixgeek said, if you're stuck in a Windows world, just get a Windows machine and be done with it.
 
This, of course, will change over the course of the next three months, in my opinion, so depending on how long you intend to _use_ that computer, it might be advisable to simply _wait_ until there are reasonable ways to run Windows software on the intel Macs.

There's going to be a couple of ways, actually:

1.) VirtualPC will come to intel Macs and offer full processor speed, so it's going to be much better than VPC on PPC Macs.
2.) VMware, iEmulator, WINE etc. will also enable you to run Windows apps from within Mac OS X.
3.) Someone will probably find a way to dual boot WinXP and Mac OS X on intel Macs.

The fact that _today_ these three things aren't possible yet should not push you into the direction of either a PPC Mac or a Wintel PC right now. _I_ assume you're going to use the computer for more than a couple of months, so the decision maybe just shouldn't be done right now.
 
Thanks to those of you who replied to me... I am forwarding this information to the procurement people at the church and will let them draw their own conclusions...

Please feel free to send your future opinions to me as I value your input.

Dennis
 
Mike Adams said:
I can see why churches would want to use Windows: it shows them what hell would be like
Click to expand...

LOL

Actually, I know of one church where I live that uses Macs for the audio/video and multimedia presentations of the service. It is amazing the stuff that they do with these Macs that blows away anything I've seen done on Windows. Of course, for the clerical staff they have Windows computers but I still don't see the requirement for going that route. Heck, there are even some open source solutions for places like churches and other religious groups. It's just a matter of letting these people know of what's out there without having to "render to Caesar." :)
 
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