So, I’ve got me a new iMac, and I need to be able to run Ergoracer and Polar Protrainer5 on it. What’s everyone use? Virtual PC? Parallels? Bootcamp? Something else entirely? Please help a poor illiterate Mac user.
Don’t have the software, so don’t know if they have native versions. But pretty much everyone uses parallels to get PC apps.
-Jot
No native versions for Mac for either one. I’ve heard that Ergoracer works with VPC. I’m trying to find one solution that will let me run both.
If you have parallels, use it. Virtual PC sucks.
*I am still on a G5, and have not actually used parallels except in the apple store, but anything has to be better than VirtualPC.
I prefer Boot Camp on the new Intel Macs since you basically get a full blown Windows machine then (but you have to reboot into OS X/XP or Vista). Will be std. when Apple finally releases Leopard
Virtual PC is dead- it was designed for OS9 and earlier, and was bought by Microsoft to virtualize Win 98 systems.
I set up everything originally in Boot Camp and have Parallels set up to use that disk partition. I find myself using Boot Camp more than Parallels. If you want to run Parallels, get 2GB+ of memory for the iMac and use Windows XP rather than Vista.
Two other things you might try:
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Fusion from VMWare, which runs a virtual machine and lets you install Windows XP, much like Parallels.
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WINE / Crossover. WINE is free but doesn’t always work; Crossover uses WINE and provides better support. I just used it to run one of my applications on the Mac (I wrote it for the PC), and it worked well. It’s about $50, and doesn’t require windows. You can run Crossover as a demo for 30 days and see if it will run your software. You run Crossover, then you can run the windows installers (.msi). Check it out here: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/. I have no idea if it will work if you are trying to read data off of an external device.
Thought I’d post an update to my own question, in case anybody’s interested. Just got done installing Parallels Desktop 3.0 and Vista Ultimate on my Intel-based iMac. I then installed Cycling Peaks and the USB driver that came with the Ergomo Pro. I was able to connect the PC (Mac) to the Ergomo computer, download files, and upgrade the firmware on the Ergomo computer with no problems whatsoever. OK- one little hangup… that retarded little CD that contains the USB driver for the USB to serial adapter doesn’t fit in a Mac drive, so I had to take it to my laptop PC and burn it to a standard-sized DVD-ROM so I could install the drivers. Other than that, no problems. Tomorrow night I’ll install Polar Protrainer 5 and migrate all my Polar stuff from my old laptop and report back on that.
It’s pretty bizarre to be running Vista on the Mac, especially in full-screen mode. It seems to run just fine, with no apparent slowness or other issues (so far).
I initially loaded Parallels on my wief’s Macbook and when it works it works well. However, for some reason it always seemed to crash every few weeks and I have to spend time trying to figure out what happened. Usually I just tinkered around, changed settings and it would stat working. Got tired of doing that and switched to Bootcamp and have yet to have any problems.
I use Crossover on my iMac to run Quicken for Windows and haven’t had any problems with it except that it can tend to be a bit slow. That doesn’t bother me using Quicken but I imagine it would with other programs.
OK- Parallels, Vista, Cycling Peaks, and Polar Protrainer are all installed and living happily on the Mac. Everything downloads fine and works fine on the mac. Those with a mac take heart. Note that if I had to pay full retail for Vista I probably would not have gone this route. $260 + $70 for parallels is a lot to get this stuff running on a Mac, but my brother-in-law works at Microsoft so I got Vista for a considerable discount. If not for that, I probably would have just picked up a cheap laptop for this stuff.