Do I have to buy a Windows Program in order to make Parallels work on my mac

[Donald Cobb]

I have a question about using Windows OS on a Mac. One of my reasons for considering converting to a Mac is the decreased possibility of getting a virus, or at least that is what I am being told and am hearing as I do my research. My question is, does having a Windows OS on your Mac open up your Mac to the same issues I find on PC's? I am definitely going to get BibleWorks, but I curious as to whether it is worth the additional cost to get the Mac Pro if I can possibly have the same issues my PC's have had.

If you install Windows on your Mac, you will need an antivirus... for the Windows partition. That doesn't make your Mac partition any more vulnerable to viruses, though, simply because Mac is not designed in the same way Windows was. I've been using Mac with a Windows partition and running it with Parallel for the last few years and find that fairly satisfying. As of late, there are only a couple applications I still run on Windows, BW9 being the one I use the most (by far!).

BW9 is a bit slow in this setup, and I'm eager to see it made fully compatible with CrossOver. I tried installing BW9 with a trial version of CrossOver back in early February, but wasn't able to make it run. I believe work has continued since then, and I understand that many of the bugs have been worked out (though not all). Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm thinking specifically of BW9.

For some info on this, you can take a look at :

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibi.../?app_id=10025

Donald Cobb
Aix-en-Provence, France

[Nick Laurence]

I have a question about using Windows OS on a Mac. One of my reasons for considering converting to a Mac is the decreased possibility of getting a virus, or at least that is what I am being told and am hearing as I do my research. My question is, does having a Windows OS on your Mac open up your Mac to the same issues I find on PC's? I am definitely going to get BibleWorks, but I curious as to whether it is worth the additional cost to get the Mac Pro if I can possibly have the same issues my PC's have had.

I've recently upgraded to a Mac (and it certainly does feel like an "upgrade"!) and now my only PC programme is Bibleworks, which I run through Fusion (an emulator). You are told that if you run Windows through an emulator you should install an anti-virus. I already had a subscription to Mcafee, so simply loaded this onto my Fusion version of Windows. I feel this is a bit overkill, because I don't do any activity in Windows other than Bibleworks (no surfing, no emails) and I feel it is unlikely that Bibleworks will be targeted by malware. But it hasn't cost me anything to put Mcafee there, so I've done it.

Macs aren't completely invulnerable to malware; indeed there has been a bit of a news story recently about Macs being infected by a trojan, but this does feel like something of a novelty. You can get Mac anti-virus software, and some of these say they will double up to protect any PC emulator you install (personally I have a bit of doubt that they would be as effective as PC-native anti-virus software). Nevertheless, to make this worthwhile you would need to be doing infection-risky activity through your PC emulator (surfing, downloading emails etc.), and I can't think of a reason for doing this activity through an emulator rather than using the Mac-native software, which is much less risky.

BTW I'm surprised by Donald's comment that Bibleworks is slower under the Mac. I have a Mac Book Air, and Bibleworks is far, far quicker than on my Sony laptop; if you include time taken to boot up each computer (or close down at the end) then the Mac wins even more so (now by several orders of magnitude).

[Donald Cobb]

BTW I'm surprised by Donald's comment that Bibleworks is slower under the Mac. I have a Mac Book Air, and Bibleworks is far, far quicker than on my Sony laptop; if you include time taken to boot up each computer (or close down at the end) then the Mac wins even more so (now by several orders of magnitude).

Interesting comment, Nick. It brings up questions in my mind. Is there something in my specific setup? Does Fusion tend to be more rapid than Parallel? I do know this: with the same setup, BW9 seems to run slower than BW7, which I had on my Mac until 5-6 months ago. I have also noticed this: I still have an old version of BW7 on my Mac that I run through Wine, and that is significantly faster than BW9/Parallel (2-3 times or more!). The difference becomes very noticeable the more complicated the command is--with the GSE, for instance, the same search can differ from a couple of seconds on the Wine setup to 10-15 seconds on BW9/Parallel. The Synopsis Window is also laborious with the BW9/Parallel setup to the point that I avoid using it. It's also for these reasons that I'm very keen on hearing if the issues with CrossOver have been resolved.

I'd be interested in hearing if others have had the same experience with Parallel/BW9. Perhaps Fusion tends to be more rapid in its emulation?

Donald Cobb
Aix-en-Provence, France