Changing Spaces
Like lots of Mac owners I pre-ordered a copy of Leopard and upgraded as soon as it was delivered. Although I'm still an XP stalwart with no real desire for Vista I am always keen to upgrade my Mac OS. Why? I don't know. Probably because I'm more confident it will be worth it.
Whether the upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5 is worth £80 or not I am still undecided. Most of what I've seen so far is pure "eye candy". Although there is one thing that has made it worthwhile and that's Spaces.
The way I've set it up at the moment I have two "spaces". One for everything Mac and the other running a Vista virtual machine in Parallels. Parallels is tied to the second Space and told to launch in full-screen mode.
It's just like having a 2-port KVM switch, but without the screen flicker, mouse jumping or need to lean across the desk each time. Instead all you have to do is press Ctrl+left/right arrow and you seamlessly glide from OS X to Vista.
With coolness like this I am getting closer and closer to a complete switch to the Mac. All that keeps me on Windows is Notes and Domino Designer (and a few other smaller niggles). If I can have them a button's-press away then it could almost work as a permanent solution and I'll never need to make the move to Vista as my primary OS.
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Do Notes and Designer not run under Parallels, or am I missing something never having tried it?
Yes, they do. Maybe what I wrote isn't clear. My main "PC" is a laptop with XP on it. My desk also has the Mac mini with Leopard/Spaces/Vista-in-Parallels. The mini is a secondary machine I use as an expensive jukebox and for testing web apps in IE7 (hence Vista) while keeping my main PC IE6 for "legacy" testing etc.
I spend 99% of my time on the laptop and 1% on the mini. It's whether I can switch that about that I have to decide.
Jake
You can use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to you Windows laptop, put it in 3rd space and use only mac :-)
I'm exactly in the same situation, Jake. I have an HP with Windows XP and a MiniMac (wonderful!) but I have to use XP for the Designer
I didn't know you could run apps full screen in their own Spaces area, that does make it more useful!
Spaces probably makes more sense than multiple monitors on the Mac doesn't it, because the menu bar will always be visible on the screen. That seems to be a weakness with the shared menu bar approach on the Mac - it falls apart a bit when you plug in multiple monitors and only one screen has a menu bar.
Do it, do it, do it. I received tons of gleaming boxes three days ago, and it is pure bliss. I got a Mac Pro, running three screens, and parallels/fusion for the Notes Development. I have also a domino server running on a virtual machine. all is smooth, apart for the occasional crash of parallels. Fusion seems to be more stable...
Andrew
Are there any performance issues running a copy of Vista + Windows apps in addition to all the Mac stuff? This solution isn't an option for me right now, as I'm on a G4 Powerbook, but it sounds tempting for my next Mac...
Sean. My mini has 2gb of RAM (DIY upgrade job), so I've yet to see many issues with performance.
The thing I've learnt with Parallels is not to try and run multiple VMs if the combined memory usage of them comes anywhere close to the total RAM in the actual machine. If you have 2GB of RAM and try to run 3 VMs each with 512MB of RAM then you might find yourself doing a hard reboot when they fail to load properly, as I did...
Just curious, what is it about Vista do you not like? I have found it to be far, far better than XP could ever hope to be. It is certainly easier to move around in, looks much nicer, feels better and does not crash like XP did. Just wondering. Don't want to get into an anti-Vista/Leopard/XP talk with anyone.
Hmm, good question George. It's more a general feeling I have, rather than any particular niggles I could make a list of.
One of things I don't like is the "Windows needs your permission to continue" dialogs that popup all over the shop. If they can be avoided then I might actually think about it.
jake
I got a new laptop last week which was pre-installed with Vista. The "Windows needs your permission to continue" dialog box is extremely annoying. Thankfully you can turn this off.
Start – Control Panel - User accounts – Select user accounts and there is an option to turn off UAC (user account control) Off
@Jake: That is just one setting, and then Vista behaves like XP.
How to turn it off:
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I didn't know that you could turn it off, the first two times I installed Vista (came cheap with my laptop), and got tired of it after a couple of weeks because of the pop-ups/software not working until you set "Run as Administrator".
With User Account Control off, Vista >= XP
You know, it's funny. One of the big complaints I read about Vista is that very issue of the pop up. Well, recently, I have been playing with Ubuntu 7.10. Know what? Does the same bloody thing! Quite a bit of what I was doing caused that box to pop up, yet I've read very little about it. What gives there?
Anyway, as someone has pointed out, you can turn off the UAC notifications in Vista. I must have gotten used to it, they do not bother me like they did at first. The benefits of Vista have pushed that little niggle to back burner for me.
I do wish Microsoft were more consistent with the UI though. It, for the most part, looks great, but there are little bits,here and there, that still just wreak of Windows 95. UGH!
I've been running my MacBook Pro for half a year now, having Vista on a Boot Camp partition. Both Tiger/Leopard and Vista running smoothly.
I just wish there was a Notes designer for Mac.
Less reason to reboot. Parallels is a bit slow when doing Notes development 80% of the time.
Wohooo!. It works with VMWare Fussion too. I'm in love.
Just the thought of MacOSX in Space 1, Windows XP in Space 2, Windows Vista in Space 3, and Ubuntu in Space 4, makes me want to buy 4GB for my Macbook Pro.
Theo, I don't know about Parallels, but I don't find much (if any) of a difference between using Designer in Fussion and using it on my IBM laptop.
P.S. The other day I discovered that I could drag a PNG logo from my Desktop (Mac) and drop it in Word 2007 (Windows). Fussion did the magic, and I was impressed.
its funny how leopard has been getting so much bad wrap. I haven't had an experience as bad as with my vista machines. Im glad I changed to OS X in march. it's been the best switch. Netbarrier and Little Snitch... sweet
IE7 doesn't require Vista, runs on XP. Also for testing against multiple versions of IE I use this very useful package:
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Basically I have IE7 installed, and then IE6 and 5.5 (for the occasional client request) from Multiple IEs. I can have all 3 open and it works great.
I'd back up Theo - I use Fusion with Domino Designer on a Macbook, no issue at all. I haven't used Parallels, so can't comment on the speed thing, but Fusion is plenty fast enough
Marcin, IE7 does run under XP, however the 'protected mode' only works in Vista. Protected mode is essentially a sandboxed area for IE to run in-this, in theory, is supposed to help protect you from nastyware.