SWA and Macs

[jetlink130]

I just started at SWA and have noticed that not much is geared for Mac users. If there are any SWA people that use Macs, I would luv some input.

Thanks

 

[FatesPawn]

As long as the ONLY way to access Maestro is through IE, there will never be any Mac support at SWA. It's too bad.

I just bit the bullet and bought Virtual PC 7.0. That way I can run Moostro, Wbid, and Maestro. I never thought XP could be so SLOW though ;-) I guess my G5 just isn't up to snuff.

Fate.

 

[TR4A]

I just started at SWA and have noticed that not much is geared for Mac users. If there are any SWA people that use Macs, I would luv some input.

You might want to post this on the SWAPA Forum or Southwest PPrune Forum. You would get a better response.

 

[YellowLab]

Noooooooooooooo!!!! I have a G5 and a powerbook and your telling me I have to get Virtual PC for both. WTF? I'm assuming there is no way around this?

 

[FatesPawn]

Sorry, but I can't see how. Honestly, I haven't investigated since I already had Virtual PC on my G5. The problem is that the company's scheduling system (called Maestro) download loads an applet on the users system. It's not a web based system.

The other two programs I mentioned, Wbid and Moostro are not required for access, but they make your life easier. I hear there is a Wbid competitor for Macintosh (that's the bidding program) but I haven't looked it up.

Fate.

 

[SWAdude]

There are plenty of mac users at SWA so there is plenty of info on this issue.

http://macrewsoft.com/index.html

This will get you maestro on your mac but you will be unable to print. This same guy offers a bid sort program and I believe it is free during his beta testing. The maestro patch is free.

He is a HOU FO that deserves a beer from all us SWA mac users.

I became a mac user one and a half years ago. To solve the company use problems I hooked up an airport extreme and use my note book wireless to the network. To print off this setup is tricky to set up. I did a google search and quickly found an article to walk me through setting up my printer for my notebook.

This will do until I need to buy another notebook then I will go to the powerbook virtual pc setup.

Besides bidding and moostro sheets you really don't spend that much time using the virtual pc so the slow thing really isn't a huge issue.

Good luck!

 

[Sunnfun]

I just bit the bullet and bought Virtual PC 7.0. That way I can run Moostro, Wbid, and Maestro. I never thought XP could be so SLOW though ;-) I guess my G5 just isn't up to snuff.

If you happen to know someone with a Windows 2000 CD, install that instead. It is much faster than XP; XP is so bloated with all that stuff running in the background. I'm running W2K on my 1 GHz iBook on VPC 6, and it is not bad at all. You having a G5 should run it even faster.

 

[jetlink130]

Thanks for the start. There are two of us in my new hire class that are Mac users. I will look into posting on the SWAPA forum and try some of the other stuff suggested.

Thought I was going to have to quit SWA

 

[NuGuy]

If you happen to know someone with a Windows 2000 CD, install that instead. It is much faster than XP; XP is so bloated with all that stuff running in the background. I'm running W2K on my 1 GHz iBook on VPC 6, and it is not bad at all. You having a G5 should run it even faster.

I'll agree. Use Win 2k. XP technology without all of the bloat. I've also got it running on my VPC 6, and it is very quick, and relatively stable.

Win 98 also works very well with VPC. If your software will support it, I would run 98 instead of XP.

OTOH, if you MUST use XP, go into the settings and turn down ALL the visuals and turn the sound off. Turn off/uninstall anything extra in the background. Zonealarm and Norton AV are both VERY bad resource hogs.

BTW, the disk image for a Win 98 install is 1GB, while a image for an XP install is 4GB under VPC 6...

Nu

 

[Sunnfun]

Win 98 also works very well with VPC. If your software will support it, I would run 98 instead of XP.

Actually Connectix recommends using W2K, since a pure 32 Bit OS supposedly runs faster than a mixed 16/32Bit OS like 98 or ME. It has something to do with the way the PowerPC emulates the x86 Processor.

They had that hint in their support section before they were bought by Mickeysoft. Now it's gone of course...

OTOH, if you MUST use XP, go into the settings and turn down ALL the visuals and turn the sound off. Turn off/uninstall anything extra in the background. Zonealarm and Norton AV are both VERY bad resource hogs.

Absolutely! And since the VM runs inside OS X' firewall, you should be safe of most of that. Plus Google for "trimming XP" or something like that. There is lots of advice out there for that. But even with lots of registry fiddling, XP is still slower than W2K.

btw, can't wait for Mac OS X Tiger, gotta love an OS that actually gets faster with every new major release!

 

[NuGuy]

btw, can't wait for Mac OS X Tiger, gotta love an OS that actually gets faster with every new major release!

Amen, But not only that, a new version of an OS that runs BETTER on older computers. Go figure!

Nu

 

[jhill]

I just started at SWA and have noticed that not much is geared for Mac users. If there are any SWA people that use Macs, I would luv some input.

Thanks

Get Windows right away

 

[YellowLab]

Went to the apple store online. Which virtual PC program should I get? I don't know the difference between each of them I'm not that savvy. I did see there was one virtual PC that is a Windows 2000. Is that the one I should get?

Thanks

 

[MLBWINGBORN]

There is hope..

The whole system is supposed to be web based in the "near "future.

You will be able to run anything from anywhere and am told the first changes to the system that will allow the transition to web based have been installed.

Hang on for a few months and your MAC will be golden.

Mike

 

[Sunnfun]

Went to the apple store online. Which virtual PC program should I get? I don't know the difference between each of them I'm not that savvy. I did see there was one virtual PC that is a Windows 2000. Is that the one I should get?

Thanks

There's actually two parts to every VirtualPC Installation: The Virtual Machine and the Operating System or "Guest OS". You can buy VirtualPC with or without a Guest OS. If you already have a Windows CD from an earlier PC or something, you can use that and just buy VirtualPC without a Guest OS. You just create a virtual machine in VirtualPC and boot from your Windows Install CD and install Windows like you would on a "naked" PC. Don't forgot to install your extensions afterwards, those will enable printer access, usb access and so forth. It's all actually a lot easier when you do it.

Bottom Line: If you already have a Windows Install CD (Who doesn't...) then you don't need to buy one with Virtual PC. And if you don't want to use VirtualPC on your G5, just buy a used copy of VirtualPC 6 off of ebay, it's faster than VPC 7.

Hope this helped.

Cheers,
Sun'n Fun

 

[FatesPawn]

There's actually two parts to every VirtualPC Installation: The Virtual Machine and the Operating System or "Guest OS". You can buy VirtualPC with or without a Guest OS. If you already have a Windows CD from an earlier PC or something, you can use that and just buy VirtualPC without a Guest OS. You just create a virtual machine in VirtualPC and boot from your Windows Install CD and install Windows like you would on a "naked" PC. Don't forgot to install your extensions afterwards, those will enable printer access, usb access and so forth. It's all actually a lot easier when you do it.

Bottom Line: If you already have a Windows Install CD (Who doesn't...) then you don't need to buy one with Virtual PC.

Use a little caution here though. After reading this thread, I decided to try out Win98 on my Virtual Machine as well as XP to compare speeds. While it was faster, Virtual PC 7 doesn't support "virtual printing" from within Win98. That means that it has to STEAL the usb printer from the MAC. ie. the printer CANNOT be used from within the Mac environment while VPC is running. No big deal. But, I has a REAL hard time installing drivers from within Win98 for my printer.

If you buy the all in one package complete with WinXP OS, you won't have this problem. VPC will emulate a printer from within XP and print through the mac software to your printer. It's a slow process so don't plan on doing much printing from Winxp unless you can get your printer drivers to work like I described above.

I just wanted to clairify that Vitual PC will not "virtually print" from within Win98.

Fate.

 

[Sunnfun]

While it was faster, Virtual PC 7 doesn't support "virtual printing" from within Win98. That means that it has to STEAL the usb printer from the MAC. ie. the printer CANNOT be used from within the Mac environment while VPC is running. No big deal. But, I has a REAL hard time installing drivers from within Win98 for my printer.

True. That's why I recommend Win2000

If you buy the all in one package complete with WinXP OS, you won't have this problem. VPC will emulate a printer from within XP and print through the mac software to your printer. It's a slow process so don't plan on doing much printing from Winxp unless you can get your printer drivers to work like I described above.

That's also true, but XP is just so painfully slow compared to Win2000 on a G4. I don't know how it is with a G5, but People report VPC7 to be somewhat slower VPC6 on G5s.

Anyways, as far as printing goes, the fastest solution is to install a little program called CutePDF to enable "print-to-pdf" in Windows. It installs a little Virtual Printer inside Windows and you print to pdf the same way as you can do under Mac OS X. Then just access the pdf-file from OS X and print it native. No slow printer installation and and no hassles with USB-Sharing etc. etc. Works like a charm, I print my logbook from LogbookPro like that.

You can get the free Cute PDF Writer here on their Website

Cheers,
Sun'n Fun

 

[FatesPawn]

That's also true, but XP is just so painfully slow compared to Win2000 on a G4. I don't know how it is with a G5, but People report VPC7 to be somewhat slower VPC6 on G5s.

Thanks for the suggestion about the PDF converter. Sounds promising.

Unfortunately, Virtual PC 6.x won't run on G5 processors. I'd love to have a side-by-side comparison. My next step is to try to get my hands on a copy of Win2000 like you suggested. I'd love to see how the speed compares.

Fate

 

[njcapt]

I don't know nothin' from SWA, but my G3 iBook ran VPC 5.0 with XP home at a snail's pace. I upgraded to VPC 7.0 with XP Pro when I got a 1.33 gHz G4 iBook and it wasn't any speedier. I started messing around with the allocation of memory and had a lot of luck. VPC really only requires 256Megs of ram allocated to the use of XP. If you only have 640 to 768 Megs of ram in your Mac, you will be slowed down dramatically if you allocate any more than that for XP's use. VPC uses a buttload of ram to emulate the Intel chipset, and if you starve it any, it will seriously slow down. You're better off leaving as much ram as possible for VPC and less for XP's use. I've got 768 megs of ram in my G4 iBook, alocate 256 megs for XP's use and run BidPro, Netscape and Adobe Acrobat Reader at the same time like a champ.