Dire Straits!

I'm in a tough situation - I bought a 17" macbook pro last weekend for use in my small business. I'd never owned a mac before but had heard so many good things about them. I was told that I could use mac office for applications that would create files that could be used with regular windows office files. Then, yesterday, I discovered that some of the apps I need to download for my business need to run on windows and the reports are distributed into excel. OOPS! Now before you think I'm a complete idiot, you must know that the software that I support is internet based and was told that my OS didn't matter - but it turns out that it does. So! I found out about boot camp, but am not sure if it really works.......I have 160 gig hard drive but if partitioned, won't that really shrink the power and memory of the computer? Windows is such a hog. If boot camp does work then I still have to lay out cash for a copy of xp or vista and office suite.....is it worth the cash or should I just return this mac for a pc book?

Thanxs for any advice,

Distraught

 

Boot Camp will work - you'll have to partition your HD for it but you will not be "shrinking" your memory on the computer. Or you could use Parallels, a virtualization software, that would allow you to run Windows within Mac OS X. For that I believe any copy of XP would work if you have 1 lying around. Whether it's worth it is completely up to your needs. If you'll be using Windoze primarily then a PC notebook would be more relevant but if you'll be using Mac or would like to learn/switch then keep it.

 

It really depends. How much would buying a copy of XP and Office for Windows burn your pocket?
Or for that matter, Parallels and XP (which I actually recommend if you aren't using 3d applications). This would probably allow you to use the software in windows, export the information to an excel file, then load it into your copy of Office for OS X.

Or you could just return it and get something like a Dell Latitude (ignore the Inspiron series, they are crap).

 

boot camp works, and you need to have enough room for the OS, programs, and any files you wish to save.. lets say about 10gb for the OS, +programs, +storage.. You're looking at a min of 20gb to be comfortable.

Who's the person that said you could use any OS, and retracted? Was he refering to any linux support? Or is windows strictly it? You could also try Parallels which doesn't require reboot and does alright aslong as it's not graphically intensive... i.e. 3-d. Parallels costs 80 bucks. It can run multiple OSs

This is a good place to start. Windows should be fine even with 1gb of ram, again depending on what your programs actually require.

Lastly, I'm not sure why excel files would be any different, PC to Mac, cause I have no trouble here going back and forth. You can get Excel for Mac, but I thought that already came in the Office package.


Hah, - guess I took too long to type that.. got beaten to the punch. =P

 

First of all, before trying bootcamp or parallels... have you tried either MS Office for Mac or OpenOffice (or Neo Office)? At least the excel reports may be ok.

 

I was just about to suggest that you should try out OpenOffice [ http://www.openoffice.org/] ... the files are easily transferrable between OpenOffice and Windows Office. My girlfriend seems to be having great results with using OO here at home, and then taking the files with her to school.

 

i use open office and so far have no issues between excel and word for with office 2k3

 

Thanks for all the replies! To answer a few of your questions - the software I work with is used with the internet, but templates of the software need to be downloaded into a windows platform before it can be accessed online. One of the techs in california said that it would work on any os since it was internet based, but it isn't cOMpletely internet based since there are templates that must be downloaded. So the problem is more than which office suite can I use, mac or micro, it is a matter of needing the windows os. So if bootcamp works, then I guess I could try it. I've read up on boot camp, but the articles are a year or so old so maybe it works better now - but I'm wondering - after partitioning the drives - does the mac use all of the available ram from the whole computer or just the ram allocated for each partition? Some of the articles I've read are confusing - some say that all of the mac's power is available once you are running the os native thru bootcamp, and some say that it cuts the mac's power. I don't want to cut my ram in half because I need all I can get.

 

You are a little confused there. RAM = Random Access Memory; Your MBP should have 512MB, maybe 1Gb or 2GB depending on how you ordered. All this RAM (which is where running software, OS included stay) is accessible to Windows using Bootcamp. You may run into a few driver problems, but there is no problem in accessing RAM. Now, you mentioned the hard disk. The only HDD space that will be available to windows will be the one in its partition... but you have a 160GB HDD, so you can allocate more than enough space for Win and still have lots for OS X - you need to account for your windows software, of course, but from what you say it doesn't take up much space. A 10GB partition should be more than enough I guess, if that's the only thing you'd want to use in Windows. Perhaps 30GB is more failsafe, and you'd still have 130GB for OS X (my Macbook has a 60GB HDD!).
Perhaps you are referring to Parallels when you ask about windows not having access to all RAM. Inside Parallels, you have to allocate a certain amount of RAM to it - and leave some for OS X as well, so Windows or other guests can't have it all. I'd say you should have more than 1GB of RAM if you want to use Parallels. Also, most probably your software will work fine under Parallels - but as you noted it needs its own license plus Windows.
Good luck...