Interfacing with my PC

I just ordered my first Mac today, 13" macbook pro, after much scrutiny. I realized after owning my ipod, I don't really care too much for the smug mac users I've known in the past (many), but Mac mobile devices just can't be beat in reliability. This aside, i was wondering what kind of interfacing problems i might have with my PC.

Here are some questions i hope people can answer

1) I have an external hard drive with all my work files, plus some games and such. I know the HD needs to be FAT32 formatted, would there be any other foreseeable problems with me being able to access these files?

2) What kind of networking problems can i expect between win7 and my macbook? I know windows networking is extremely finicky, but being able to transfer files would be very nice.

3) There's nothing special i should have to do to network my Mac with my router is there? This will be the first mac on the network!

4) Networking games through boot camp? this is primarily a work laptop, but when i take it on the road I want to be able to play old networked games through boot camp.

5) Any other tips would be awesome! I read the faqs and such, but am hoping the community might have something to add and prove me wrong about all the jackasses I've known in the past, =P

Thanks, looking forward to my macbook and talking to some good peeps,

Hands up everyone who thinks this guy will be a total Mac ******* within let's say a year.

I'll try to give you the answers you're looking for.

1. Mac OS X can natively read and write FAT32 as you already know, so if the drive is formatted that way it should be fine. It *is* possible to install drivers to allow for transparent writing to NTFS as well, but I have heard its a little dicey. Bobtomay mentioned ParagonNTFS, do a search to see what he had to say about it (or perhaps he'll weigh in here).

2. Should work pretty well. OS X uses SMB I believe, for basic networking it should just, you know, work.

3. No.

4. Should work fine.

5. Be sure to download and install Flip4Mac WMV Player and Perian so you can view WMV videos (and others) in QuickTime or embedded on web pages without issue. As I said in this post, security is for the most part handled and you don't need to really worry about it apart from the common-sense caveats.

If you are running Windows on your Mac, regardless of whether its a Boot Camp partition or using a virtualiser, your Windows install is subject to the same threats it is on your PC. To that end, use whatever tools you used before to ward off infections.

The teachers

Thanks!

As far as i can tell, i trade performance for convenience when choosing whether to dual boot or run a virtual machine for windows correct? How much of a performance hit do i take between these two? I do use some ugly software for circuit design that is processor heavy....

I can find resources for the setup, thanks again!

I haven't run head-to-head tests, but certainly a dedicated Boot Camp partition is going to give you better performance because its not running two OSes, but more experience hands in this should jump in.

2) There are some reports on the web that Windows 7 and Mac don't always play nice together. I've never had a problem with XP - but I did (still do) have trouble getting my in-laws' windows 7 laptop to mount disks on the Mac and vice versa. That being said everywhere else (work and my house) Mac and Windows 7 work fine together. As far as I can tell - if you use the same username and password it just seems to work.

What program are you running for circuit design? I am an Application Engineer for an EDA company - and I run a Mac with Windows on bootcamp. I actually run a VM of Ubuntu to run our Linux software. For small demos I can run VMs but if I really need horsepower I VNC into one of our servers for Linux, or I boot into bootcamp for Windows. If you are doing anything like simulation, layout, that takes 100% of the CPU for long periods of time you are better off running native.

IvanLasston said:

2)
What program are you running for circuit design? I am an Application Engineer for an EDA company - and I run a Mac with Windows on bootcamp. I actually run a VM of Ubuntu to run our Linux software. For small demos I can run VMs but if I really need horsepower I VNC into one of our servers for Linux, or I boot into bootcamp for Windows. If you are doing anything like simulation, layout, that takes 100% of the CPU for long periods of time you are better off running native.

Click to expand...

Yea, i need Protel and Verilog. I know Verilog can be a resource hog because of the simulation, and I'm not quite sure how heavy Protels routing software is... But I'm assuming it isn't natively designed for macs because engineers tend to hate macs, for whatever reason....

The other problem is that my client runs very old copies of this software, they won't let us use ultium...

One other solution I found for read/write privilages is to install MacFuse and the NTFS-3G driver. They allow Mac to read/write to NTFS without an issue, and you don't have to reformat your drive. That's how I utilize my Mac/PC/Ext HD usage. I've had no issues or problems so far.