New iMac I7 questions runing Parallels and disc burner

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My 6 year old Mac Pro died (still trying to revive) so I replaced with a 27 inch iMac loaded. I had both a PC and Mac on my desk and switched betweeen both with A/B switch on monitor.
My office is PC based and I have to do Powerepoint files on PC end and some other PC stuff that does not come through the same on Mac side, so I am going to run Parallels 8. I want to get a external disc burner that I can run on both Mac and when I am in virtual PC. Will I have any problems? Can it be seen on both sides. What burner would be best for this.
On PC side I have Roxio creator 2012 Pro.
Doing page layout/photo retouch etc on Mac end
Any thoughts?
 

Raz0rEdge

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Welcome to Mac-Forums.

If your PC needs are just the Office tools, the Office for Mac suite or iLife (Pages/Numbers/Keynote) or Libreoffice (free version of Office) should all be able to create powerpoint slides that work on Windows. I do this all the time on my iMac..

If you have other PC needs, then a VM is fine.

If you use either Parallels or VMWare Fusion as your virtualization software then when you plug in your external writer, you will be promoted to indicate whether the Mac or Windows should have access to the device, choose the one that makes sense and off you go..

Any reputable decent speed burner should be fine, I can't imagine that these are very expensive these days..
 
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Much thx Raz0rEdge

Yes Office only for PC, but I have found that in previous versions I have font conflicts even with standard PC fonts and things are off . I have a lot of edits from my clients so there is back and forth. I find it easier just to stay PC here and not worry about potential conflicts in a deck of 100 slides x 4-5 presentations.

Because my Mac was older than new PC network installed in Jan I had no access to files and had to sneakernet or Dropbox between the two. This is tons easier and don't mind.

Any other things I should consider in a network with both systems?
 

Raz0rEdge

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Ahh, good deal. If you are OK dealing with the two systems, then by all means you can continue doing that..now with the Virtualization software you can share folders on your Host (OS X) with the Guest (Windows) easily, and I'd recommend you do that and do all of your work in that shared folder so that you can easily access them in OS X for burning or what have you..

If you wish to share data between the PC and Mac, then you can either share a folder on the PC or the Mac and access it using CIFS/SMB and go from there..

But, as you've discovered, Dropbox makes some of this easier by not only syncing your data between the two computers, but giving you a 3rd backup on the cloud in cases of any catastrophe..
 
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Edge,
A friend of mine thinks that I will not be able to use a burner in Mac and virtual PC. Can you (or anyone) confirm? I am going out at lunch to most likely buy a Mac Super drive. I want to be able to burn from both platforms. Thanks
 

Raz0rEdge

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I have so far used a USB scanner, multi-port card reader, 4-port serial-to-USB hub, Logictec harmony remote, and a couple of other USB devices with my VMs running Windows and Linux without any problems.

I suspect the CD burner to be the same, in that, it will work absolutely fine without any problems. What you would need to do is upon initial insertion of the burner, if the VM is running (with VMWare Fusion for example) you will get the pop-up asking where to connect it. Choose Windows and it will work within the VM. Once you want to burn something in OS X, then from the USB device list on the VM toolbar, choose the burner and select disconnect. Now OS X will see it and can use it, to use it in the VM again, go back to the same selection in the VM toolbar and choose connect.

Does your friend KNOW for a fact that the USB burner wouldn't work or are they guessing?
 
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No he does not KNOW. Just the guy I bounce things off of, with knowledge of both. He is not saying definitively, just trying to save me an additional trip to the mall to buy additional hardware. Going know to get drive, will let you know how I do
Thx again for your info
 
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MacInWin

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I have parallels 8 and my dvd burner connects and operates just fine. I don't have burner software on Windows, but the drive connects perfectly and is properly reported as a read/write device.
 
M

MacInWin

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UPDATE: I just burned a DVD from an .ISO file under WindowsXP Pro through Parallels 8 onto my USB DVD burner. Worked fine.
 

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