12-29-2007, 10:54 PM

Ladies and Gents,

I’m hoping you can help a newbie out. I purchased a new Mac Book for my wife for Christmas.

Unfortunately neither of us has any real experience with Mac.

I currently have a couple of issues I’m hoping you can help with.

My wife accesses a mainframe system for work. The system she uses requires the usage of the F1-F24 function keys. So far I haven’t been able to get anything higher than an f12 function key to work.

My second problem comes from the web application she uses. She is using IBM Websphere Accelerator app to update content on a site. This application hasn’t worked correctly on any browser I’ve tried on the Mac Book. She was using IE on her old machine to access the application. I would love to hear from anyone if they have a recommendation. IBM has told the company they officially only support IE.

Please, please help me out. It took me two years to convince my wife to make the switch, and currently she can’t get any work done on this fabulous machine.

Thanks,
B-RadL

12-29-2007, 11:14 PM

Wow B-RadL I didn't even know there were function keys past F12 and looked at my mac keyboard and realized it goes to F13.. thanks for widening my view hehe.. I imagine you could get adding function by keyboard mapping or macros?

As for the IBM (and for the F keys), leopard comes with bootcamp or you could purchase (or use the trial temporarily of) parallels unless or until a mac alternative is found. This is also an OK way for just getting yourself mac-attuned. Anyways hopefully someone will come up with a better answer..

Good luck!

12-29-2007, 11:24 PM

mac goes to F16

12-30-2007, 12:32 AM

Just looking at my iMac keyboard , there are 19 F keys,maybe that's the way to go. Van

12-30-2007, 04:00 PM

Unfourtunetly, the buisness world dosen't have the reputation for huge support of Macs. It sounds to me like your Wife's work requires a PC for access. Just like other tasks, sometimes you need specialized tools to do the job (Some screws use phillips head, some use straight slot). In this case, you need IE which you'll only get in Windows.

BootCamp is definetly your best option. Turns your Mac into a multi-function tool.

-MikeM

12-30-2007, 04:14 PM

If you can't get the IBM web-software to work with Firefox, Safari, Opera, or any other other Mac-available browsers - try ies4osx.

When accessing the mainframe - what is she using? SSH? Keymapping should be available. I've never actually owned a keyboard that went above F16-F19 so that seems like the keymapping is the best option.