Switching to Mac from Windoze

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My first post guys so humour me......

I'm a recent and increasingly avid convert to Macs having got a Macbook and I-phone and appreciating the reliability and style of both.

I'm now at the point of thinking of going the whole hog and ditching my desktop PC in favour of an IMac so that I have to no longer spend half my life maintaining the PC; virus updates etc etc. However.............. I run 2 Quicken based finance packages, Quicken and Quickbooks and from reading around the subject there are problems to say the least in taking those to the Mac platform (Intuit's problem not Mac I gather). Also, I have a number c1500, tracks on I tunes that are on my PC and phone but, I understand, can't be transferred back from phone to new IMac without going about it one by one.............and life's too short for that.

Now here's the daft question..........I know that there are various ways of running windows on a Mac - (Bootcamp and others), but I'd rather have the Mac running as a Mac with no legacy windows issues lurking in there. Can an IMac be hooked up to a PC so that it has the function of simply a screen so that I can run the few windows apps I need when I need them and for 95% of the time, disconnect the PC again and use the IMac as it should be.

I realise that might be a really dumb question but just a thought? Stop laughing out there !!!

Cheers

Bob
 
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Mac Mini Core i7 2012 | White 2009 MacBook 2 Ghz | 733 Mhz G4 Quicksilver
To get music from an iphone to a mac, use Senuti

To control a pc from a mac, you need VNC. Chicken of the VNC is a good client on the mac side, you will have to set-up the PC as a VNC server.

Download TightVNC
 
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Louishen

Many thanks. I'll go check out both options. Is configuring my PC as a VNC Server part of the "Chicken of the VNC" package, or something I do independently of that. Its currently running XP
Cheers
Bob
 
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Bob,

I'm a new Mac owner as well (3 weeks now), and just like you, I don't really want to load Windows on my Mac mini. What I've done, and it's working really well, is to use a KVM switch and have both my Mac and my Dell share the same monitor, keyboard and mouse. To toggle between operating systems I just hit a keyboard combination.

So far I've been able to find pretty much acceptable Mac alternatives for most of my favorite applications, but the one thing I just have not been able to get around is my library's Overdrive service for downloading audiobooks. For that I just must have Windows, and so the KVM is really a great solution for me.

Don't know whether this would be something that would work for you, but the switch was around $35 from Newegg.
 
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khintul

That's more like what I think I was trying to achieve although I think the quality of the IMac screen would beat anything I currently had.

I suppose in my initial question, I wondered whether I could hook up the IMac to act simply as a monitor for the PC for those few programs I need, but for the majority of the time to run a Mac computer.

I'm guessing its not possible by the sound of it

Bob
 

cwa107


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14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
As a Windows network administrator, there are quite a few tools available only in Windows that I need. So, I run Windows XP in VMWare Fusion. It runs side-by-side with my Mac desktop, and I can easily transfer files back and forth. Well worth the investment IMO, and when you don't need to use it, you can just turn the virtual machine off. Get a virus? Just delete the virtual hard drive file and restore from backup and you're back in business in minutes. It's like Windows without the worries.
 
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iMac 20" 2.66Ghz, 4Gb RAM, 320Gb HDD, OSX 10.5.6
As a Windows network administrator, there are quite a few tools available only in Windows that I need. So, I run Windows XP in VMWare Fusion. It runs side-by-side with my Mac desktop, and I can easily transfer files back and forth. Well worth the investment IMO, and when you don't need to use it, you can just turn the virtual machine off. Get a virus? Just delete the virtual hard drive file and restore from backup and you're back in business in minutes. It's like Windows without the worries.


Agreed, and its probably the easiest way to run quicken. I also looked for a mac version of quicken and couldn't find anything that didn't require tons of conversion. There's also bootcamp if you want to run an entire windows partition.

HTH

S
 
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Thanks to everyone for your comments. I have thought about VMWare Fusion but by running it on the Mac, I was worried about running the risk of getting viruses and spyware. If what you are suggesting is I can just ditch the virtual drive and start again thats great news. Do you need to run virus software on the virtual machine to be safe? Once you wipe a virtual hard drive under fusion, presumably you can recreate it again?

Cheers

Bob
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Al iMac 20" 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
but I'd rather have the Mac running as a Mac with no legacy windows issues lurking in there.

What legacy issues? OS X is isolated and separate from Windows.

I'd just use Parallels.
 

cwa107


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What legacy issues? OS X is isolated and separate from Windows.

I'd just use Parallels.

Just a guess, but I think he or she is referring to the fact that CrossOver creates a file structure in your home folder that emulates the Windows file structure. There, all of your DLLs, simulated registry and other Windows-based conundrums are stored. Of course, you can always axe this directory should you feel the need to abandon CrossOver, but it still introduces an element of complexity that would otherwise not need to be there when running Windows via VM.

For compatibility, security and stability reasons, in my opinion, running Windows via Parallels or Fusion is the best option. CrossOver (and other WINE-based solutions) are nothing more than an elegant hack.
 
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Error opening PC Quicken file

I've loaded Windows Quicken 2000 on VMWare Fusion on my Macbook, but cannot seem to open the .qdf file that I transferred over from my Windows machine. Has anyone had this problem?

I did not register the Fusion install of Quicken; don't know if that matters. It does open and validates the .qdf file, but has an "Error Opening File" message after that. I was wondering if it's a OSX/WinXP translation thing.

Do I have to transfer the data in .qif format or something?

Mark
 

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