Another member in the family
by Volker Weber
Thomas got his first Mac this week. And for a really good deal. Maybe I should start taking commission from Apple. :-)
I think he has made an excellent choice. The price for 15" Powerbook has come down a lot in the last weeks. The machine comes with an Airport card installed and he has the 1GHz G4 with 512 meg of RAM, superdrive, 60 gig hard drive, and (in contrast to the 12" model) a PC-Card slot.
I know there is rumor about a new 15" machine coming up but the Titanium Powerbook is one exceptional machine. Welcome to the club, Thomas.
Comments
*sigh* I really would like to buy a Powerbook, too.
Does anyone have experience in running Domino Desginer & Administrator on a Mac inside a virtual Win32 machine?
For me that's still the main reason to run a Win32 computer :-(
No direct experience, but I have seen it done; you need a pretty hefty Mac in terms of CPU and RAM to get the most out of such a set-up.
Julian, that would not make any sense. It is the software that makes the difference. If you need Windows software, you should be running a PC.
I have installed Windows XP on my Mac and I have never used it so far. I just wanted to try it since it had been sitting on my shelf for many months - without crashing. :-)
The Powerbooks look nicer than PCs but they are not necessarily better. A Stinkpad is a wonderful machine and it is not that much more expensive than a Powerbook. You want the Powerbook because you want the software. So, if you want Windows software there is no incentive to have a Mac.
There's no reason to stick with Windows until you can ditch all your Windows software.
I'm in the process of switching now, but still run some Windows apps under Win32 emulation using Virtual PC. I wouldn't recommend it if you need to be permanently running Windows apps, but for now and then, it is fine.
As Ben says, if you want reasonable performance, you need plenty of processing power - Win XP on a 12" PowerBook is just about acceptable. I'm thinking of reinstalling the Windows apps under Win2000 emulation to see if that is faster.
I haven't found anything yet that didn't run under Virtual PC, although I have found a nasty with OpenOffice - some values in the cells in the spreadsheet module get corrupted when running under Virtual PC. The problem doesn't happen under Windows, nor with the Apple version of OOo running under Darwin.
Julian talks about Domino Designer.
I would not try to develop with Designer within VirtualPC. Designer in itself stretches everything beyond belief. It is a very "mature" environment with heaps of addons that may be stretching a virtual machine too far. The only thing on my mind that would be worse is WebSphere Studio. That has outgrown my current Stinkpad memory-wise.
But in the J2EE world you could stay native. No need to run within an emulation. As far as Notes development is concerned I would consider it a no-no.
thanks for the comments... Volker, in fact Domino Designer & Admin is the *only* Win32 specific software I have to use everyday. I really *want* MacOS and Mac software.
So I'm trapped: your experiences say that one cannot work productively with Domino Designer & Admin under VirtualPC. But I would like to use Mac software. Because Domino Designer & Admin has the highest priority for me, it seem's that I have to continue using a Win32 machine. *sigh*
I don't say you can't. I say you don't want to.
It looks like Notes is your main business and you are not a "simple" user. In that case, IBM does not have anything to offer you on the Mac. You would have to run your main application in an emulation. That is not a clever proposition. You do this only as an interim step.
It is exactly the reason why Microsoft has bought Connectix (the makers of VirtualPC for the Mac). They don't care for that product. What they want is the server product. It allows MS to offer an interim step for those customers that have Windows NT 4 servers and don't want to rip and replace their applications. With the virtual server MS can offer them to do a server consolidation on Windows Server 2003 and run those virtual NT4 servers there. That only makes sense as an interim step.
It is going to be interesting to see how this works out. Anybody who is able to do a rip and replace can easily take out those file and print server and jump to Linux and save a hell of a lot of money there.
As you cannot rip and replace you would be trapped permanently in the interim step. IBM is not going to offer Domino Designer on the Mac (or Linux for that matter). They offer Notes because there are customers who pay for it. And they offer developer tools for the next generation software on Linux. Because IBM knows that many of the smart developers they want to pull into the J2EE camp live on Linux.
Sorry to burst that bubble but I have seen many people being trapped inside the interim solution WinOS2 when prospective OS/2 applications where killed left and write by Microsoft strongarming their developers. I remember all too well the almost completed Word Perfect and the ever delayed Ami Pro. MacOS X is no OS/2. But I don't see IBM going there with Domino. (If they are going anywhere <eg> with it).
but that leads me to another possible solution: a terminal server. Why not installing Domino Designer (yes, it is my main business) on a terminal server and doing just a terminal session with the Mac?
However, it's not urgent to use a Mac, I just would really like to. I think the combination of a really cool GUI and an UNIX OS is just my kind of stuff.
So, someday I will solve this issue, but most probably not today :-)
Sorry to get this discussion started again but suppose I got the 12" powerbook with 600+ MB memory and I were to run Designer in VirtualPC, any idea what kind of performance I would get ? Just asking because I'm getting the powerbook later this year (for another reason) but it would be neat to be able to use it for work as well...
Jef,
Ruth's 12" powerbook that I was referring to in my note above has 640 MB memory and she runs Win XP on it under VirtualPC. Running Word or Excel is just about acceptable, but from what Volker says, it doesn't sound at all hopeful as far as Designer is concerned.
Basically, not only is the program going to run slow, but disk and network access will be slowed down by going through the emulation too - it doesn't sound like it will a fun way to earn a living...
After a few days of working with my new PowerBook I have to admit - it's big fun even more than I expected. Everything works fine just out of the box.
Yesterday after I moved all my data to the Mac I shut down my WindowsPC - good-bye Aptiva...
