AYM 4 Training - Online and Onsite Computer Training » Apple

Category Archives: Windows on Mac

Will Parallels Prove Themselves Thieves? Answer – They’re Trustworthy!

By | | , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

UPDATE!
You should be informed – I heard back from Parallels today – SAME day I requested their flexibility – and they DID do the right thing! As I’ve been a loyal customer for many years, they honored my purchase, and offered me a new license key for the new version of the software! They ARE trustworthy!

As you all know, I believe in offering both praise an condemnation when appropriate. I praise Parallels today, for doing what’s right!

——————————————

Many of you have seen me teach using Parallels to emulate the Windows environment on my Mac. Overall, I’ve found it to be the most reliable, user friendly emulation software among all the alternatives.

I’d delayed my purchase of their version 11, because I had no need of it until I upgraded my Virtual Machine to Windows 10. That was July 28th. Yesterday, Parallels announced the release of their Version 12. Oddly, their “free upgrade” for recent purchases section only allows free upgrades for software registered between August 1st (25 days prior to the release) and October 30th (when people won’t be able to buy the old version, anyway).

I’ve contacted them about the 2 day discrepancy – almost NO software company declines to offer free upgrades for purchases less than 30 days.

I’ve touted Parallels’ virtues to many of my students and clients over the years. I have my request to extend the free upgrade date on escalation. I’ll keep you updated on the outcome, as I’d never again suggest this software to anybody, if they choose to enforce their unreasonable and draconian rules in this situation.

Unlimited Cloud Backup – $50/year

By | | , , , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

It happened. My backup hard drive used for my daily backup died. It was one of those 4TB MyBooks, that is made up of a RAID of 2, 2TB disks. On that SAME day, I had to teach an online class, which often somehow screws up my Time Machine (which takes ages to fix, but is doable, and got done). BUT, I still felt my data was safe in the event of a serious problem because I’d just renewed my subscription (I’d gotten an initial free 3 month trial) for BackBlaze. I figured that having ALL my other work data on the cloud for only $50/year wasn’t a bad idea – and indeed it wasn’t!

BackBlaze doesn’t back up my operating system, applications or parts of my user folder, but I have several other terabytes of data that sits on my startup and other connected drives. I live in earthquake country and my office electrical is… let’s say… overloaded. I was given a gift of a new 4TB multi-interface replacement backup drive so I can have my local backup again (nice gift, right?)- AND I ALWAYS HAVE A SEPARATE LOCAL CLONED BACKUP OF MY STARTUP DRIVE – but for $50 I had peace of mind – and that’s a great thing!

Check them out at www.BackBlaze.com.

1Password – is it going the way of all the other corporations?

By | | , , , ,
Leave a comment

Those of you who follow my posts on my page, or on Facebook know I’ve been a HEAVY supporter of 1Password, recommending it to my clients and students on both the Mac and Windows Platforms.

Well, I’m requesting data from the company as regards their newest upgrade – and it’s possible that I may be writing back with some news that may cause me to retract my support. Please keep watch.

https://agilebits.com/onepassword

Some info for When you Finally Move to Mountain Lion

By | | , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

The Macworld Help Desk has a really helpful article about what to expect when upgrading to Mac OS 10.8 (currently 10.8.2) Mountain Lion. The article can be seen at http://bit.ly/10n5gNc

Personally, I haven’t performed this upgrade, but there’s really only one reason for this at this point. I HAVE upgraded to Lion (10.7) and do not particularly like it. It’s GREAT for new users, but for those of us who’ve been using the Mac for a long time, we have to jump through too many hoops to do anything with real control. This is the same issue with Mountain Lion, and from what I see, Mountain Lion has some improvements over Lion. So, you ask, WHY have I upgraded to Lion, and skipped Lion?

Well, I NEED my old applications that run in Rosetta. “But” (you say), “Lion doesn’t run Rosetta either, so how can this be a good reason?”

In my efforts to keep my old apps running, I found the ONE version of VMWare Fusion that allowed us to install Snow Leopard as a guest operating system so I can run my old Snow Leopard installation (my favorite OS so far, btw) in emulation – much the same way I run Windows. Now, I need you guys to know that installing Snow Leopard’s Client OS may be breaking the “letter of the law” unless you use the Server version.

The ONE version of VMWare Fusion that will allow the use of Snow Leopard’s Client (means end-user version) will stop working if I upgrade it, and the old version will not run on Mountain Lion – simple as that!

Oh, and I should tell you that I HAVE tried using the Server version of Snow Leopard in Parallels and VMWare. They work fine, but don’t have the same capabilities as they do when emulating Windows – they don’t allow copy/paste to work between environments, and they don’t allow drag and drop of files from the main environment to the virtualized one (a VERY helpful feature between Mac and Windows – non-existent in Mac to Mac emulation – can you believe it?!)

All this, so you can understand the implications of upgrading your Operating System on the Mac. It may not affect you as most of you have been using the Mac for a short enough time that you don’t have any older programs that require Rosetta. But if you do, you may wish to take heed.

Powerpoint Problem with Boot Camp – and Resolution!

By | | , , , ,
1 Comment

As you probably know, most of the actual work I do is on the Mac side of my computer, and I haven’t had much need to use the Windows version of Powerpoint in some time. Of course, today I had to use it… and so the saga begins!

Every time I started to type on a slide, Powerpoint crashed! I tried all the usual suspects – eliminated all my add-ons. Tried troubleshooting by starting Powerpoint in Safe Mode… nothing worked. Fortunately, I had it installed in Parallels on my laptop, so I was able to get work done, but I really needed it on my Windows 7 BootCamp partition (running through Parallels).

After MUCH research, I found the answer at http://blog.cdeutsch.com/2010/12/fixed-powerpoint-2010-crashes-when.html  . Worked like a charm – and SO easy. I find it hard to believe Apple hasn’t issued an update to fix this problem – but I’m really quite grateful to Mr. Deutsch for helping me get it resolved so quickly!