Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Running Windows XP simultaneously With Mac OS X: Parallels is the software that provides for this. They just posted a "Release Candidate" that works on the MacPro. Parallels has many defects remaining. USB grief, won't work (for me) with both of my DVD-RW drives, Sound still not working correctly, but installing the included "Parellels Tools" helped a lot. I can share my Fat 32 partition with my OS X paradigm, and I love the way the cursor goes in and out of a Windows XP Window as you move it in and out of the Window.

It took far too much time to get it in a usable condition, but it does now do all I need it to. I can run MS Money, MS Access and IE 6 (which some websites require because they never learned about anybrowser.org). FrontPage 2003 provided authentication grief with Microsoft, they sure know how to alienate customers, but a barely intelligible CSR in India finally provided a code. Working just fine for the apps that I need most, I'll be using Parallels in preference to Boot Camp, (and Parallels never has a SATA slowdown, like Apple's Boot Camp 1.1 does without hacking your Windows Install CD), so I orderd a copy of Parallels (through MacInTouch at Amazon) at a discount.

The 15 day trial copy is a great way for folks to evaluate software. http://www.parallels.com/en/download/desktop/

Friday, September 08, 2006

Amazon thinks it's iTunes. Amazon has launched a new "service" UNBOX, which provides downloads of TV shows and Movies. Only issue - you can't burn them to a playable DVD. So it's hardly like an unboxed commercial DVD. It reminds me more of the failed Circuit City DIVX. Take a known service and provide extra restritions on the use, and expect people to pay the same price.
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.