How to Make Windows and Mac OS Play Nicely Together - martinposere88

About ennead months ago, I acquired a 13-inch MacBook Air. At that stop, the first Ultrabooks had been announced only were not yet shipping. Even so, I might have waited, except that the Ultrabooks I'd previewed to that point seemed uninspired–with clunkier computer hardware than the Air offered and various curious compromises. Much missed the sauceboat along the trackpad; others had lower-quality displays. And then I bought a 13-inch MacBook Air designed with a 256GB congealed-state drive.

In the first place, I had intended to load most of my Windows applications onto the new laptop, using the Parallels virtual machine software. But at or s point shortly after installing the Parallels/Windows 7 combo, I stopped using the VM, opting instead to integrate Mac OS into my existing, Microsoft-supported environment. Adopting this apparatus does mean enduring a few hassles, but overall the two operating systems play nicely unneurotic, if you set them awake decent. What follows are the inside information of how I did that, and how well the arrangement has worked.

Intellect Your PC Needs

Different people have different necessarily. When I take a laptop computer on the moving, I need it to do several specific things:

Write and edit articles like this one.
Cognitive operation and edit photographs. And since I buck all of my photos in RAW format, using a DSLR, the power to process raw images is important.
Maintain cross-compatibility between Mack OS apps and Windows software. I'm not talking here about data files alone, but also virtually usability: Basically, I didn't neediness to have to relearn applications. That said, I remained open to the idea of using native Mac OS apps, but my use of any such apps would be in addition to applications I used for daily exercise.
Integrate the Mac Osmium and Windows environments to make moving files back and forth easy.

Those requirements specify the goals I had in mind in setting improving my MacBook Air. Let's start past look the applications premix I went with, and my reasons for choosing those apps.

Applications

Microsoft Office 11 for Mac OS

First up is a no-brainer if you need to get put to work done. Other countersign processors, spreadsheets, and presentation programs do exist for the Mac; and some are probably easier to use or more aerodynamic than Office. Merely I know Word pretty closely, and I use Excel pretty regularly. Transferring files is, for the nearly part, straightforward. Some spreadsheets that use macros in the Windows interlingual rendition of Excel won't run on the Mac reading, but I rarely use those.

The applications in the dock–Word, Excel, and Photoshop–are my everyday go-to apps.

I rarely use PowerPoint, and I'm tempted to experimentation with some of the cool presentation tools I've seen for Mac Bone.

Finally, there's Outlook for the Mac. It works well enough and has some neat mail management capabilities, but its interface in Mac OS differs more from the Windows version than the other Macintosh Billet apps do. Most notably information technology lacks a fewer enterprise-centric features that are of little usance to Maine. Still, overall, its behavior echoes that of the Windows version.

Outlook for Mac lacks a couple of features that the Windows version offers, simply information technology's jolly much Outlook.

One applications programme lacking from some Windows and Mackintosh versions of Office 2010 is Visio 2010, which I on occasion use for diagramming. Though none Macintosh OS version of Visio exists, I could install it in Windows 7 working under Parallels if the deman arose. But since I use my MacBook Air chiefly as an on-the-moving machine, I plausibly don't need to throw a imitate of Visio 2010 on it.

Photoshop CS 5.5

Photoshop is a key aspect of my exact workflow–Camera Raw in peculiar. Photoshop on the Mac and low-level Windows behave quite similarly, thusly switching between versions is pretty cordate. Also installed are a number of Photoshop plugins, including Nik Software system's Dfine racket reduction and Viveza image enhancement tools, as recovered as Imagenomic's Portrayal.

Photoshop behaves surprisingly well on the MacBook Air. My background arrangement runs Photoshop for Windows on a sextet-core Core i7-3830K system with 16GB of RAM, so I was a trifle worried that whacking raw files might bog down the 4GB MacBook Air; but information technology seems to work fine, as long as I limit myself to keeping one or two images open. The noise reduction plugin runs noticeably slower subordinate these conditions, however.

IT's Photoshop. What more is there to say?

Snagit Pro

I often need to capture screenshots of applications, desktop shots, and related items. Snagit Pro, which comes in both Macintosh and Personal computer versions, is my covering of choice. The two behave slimly differently, but the substance abuser interface is correspondent enough that I'm soothing switching between versions.

Cross-Chopine Integration

I utilization a fewer additional tools to keep data in sync between the MacBook Air and my Windows systems.

Google Chromium-plate

I'm sure Safari is a open enough browser, but with Chrome's cloud-based bookmark sync feature I toilet easily keep the unchanged specify of bookmarks across all versions. I've noticed that Adobe Gaudy seems to impose a bigger execution hit and to be less stable on Mac OS than on Windows. But then, Flash ISN't a model of stability on Windows, either.

On my MacBook Publicize, the Chromium-plate bookmark folders at the topmost are exactly the same as the ones on my Windows machines.

Dropbox (and SkyDrive)

I've used Dropbox for several years now, and its capabilities have grown importantly in that time. I currently have Dropbox on my Windows arrangement, on Mac OS, and along my iPad and iPhone. Information technology's been implausibly useful, enabling me to share bigger files with editors when email North Korean won't work, and to move artwork Beaver State text files 'tween diverse systems.

I've just started playing with the latest iteration of Microsoft's SkyDrive. I right away have it installed on the MacBook Air, and with the free 25GB ready for my role–unmatched of the benefits of my beingness an early adopter–IT makes moving large photographs and other data files around still easier.

When working with either storage service, I've used the synchronised folders American Samoa my default bring through folders for all my Holy Writ and Stand out documents. That way, they outright show informed my Windows-based home systems.

Evernote

For quick and dirty notes and lists, I use Evernote. It runs across Mac Bone, Android (which I get into't use), Windows, and iOS.

Windows Home base Server Integration

Like a sho let's address an area that's not so hot: Windows Abode Server. I use Home Server 2011 A my primary repository for backups, also as for storing benchmarks, downloaded files, and media. WHS 2011 actually worked pretty well with Apple's Time Machine backup man tool–until Apple shipped Lion. At that point, the Mac OS Launchpad app displaced the WHS Launch area (the name calling and locations were same), and Microsoft hasn't fixed the problem.

IT's still possible to use WHS with Leo, however. One way is simply to usance Finder: Flick the Go menu, and and so click Connect to host. Ready for this to work, though, you do take to do it the actual IP address of your WHS system.

The other approach is to use source access on the Mac to rename the Mac OS Launchpad, and then to install WHS Launch area. Unluckily, doing so merely gives you an easier way to access the server; Time Machine still won't work. I tried a 3rd-political party plugin, Route Backup for Home Server 2011, but it refused to install on my WHS 2011 system, so that was a no-move. I likewise reasoned victimization a more involved method acting to back up a Lion scheme to WHS, but it involved installing a Linux-supported virtual machine on the WHS scheme, at which point my eyes calendered ended and I gave up.

WHS Connect running on Macintosh OS Lion isn't all that useful.

The only way I've been able to back up the system reliably is by using a USB stonelike drive connected to the MacBook Air direct. That's too bad, merely so much issues are not uncommon when you're trying to sleep in a multiplatform world.

Final Thoughts

I still haven't found an Ultrabook that quite matches the MacBook Air ironware, though the Asus Zenbook UX31E comes close. In any effect, I wouldn't buy an Ultrabook today–I'd time lag to see what some of the English ivy Nosepiece computer hardware looks like when those models start out shipping later this year. Some Ivy Bridge-based Ultrabooks may shew to be rattling slick packages. My woolgather system would be something with the same susceptible touchpad atomic number 3 the Air, a good keyboard layout, and a 1080p IPS LCD panel–weighing 3 pounds, of course.

Until that as-up to now-mythical system ships, I'm quite content to proceed using the Blond Bridge-settled MacBook Air. The laptop is lamplit, its shelling life is tremendous, and it is a pleasure to use on the road. And coming from a jolly hardcore Windows user, that's high praise.