Mac and Pc

[kakapo]

Hello,

 

This is not a mac vs pc thread.

 

I bought a macbook pro a few months ago and since then I've been mainly using it as my toilet internet browsing machine. I'm probably not getting the most out of it this way though so I'm going to be using it as my main creative/work machine while my desktop pc is being relegated to a games/torrent/porn machine. I have quite a few questions. I could use google, but I'm going to use this thread instead.

 

Can anyone recommend a way of using a single mouse and kb with both a mac and pc? I know there are 'kvm' switchers, but these seem to get a bad rep. How are people integrating pc/mac setups, or is it not worth the hassle?

 

I'm thinking of dual booting the mac. Are there reliable bootlegs of windows 7 knocking about? Don't want details, just want to test it out without wasting my time.

 

I get the basics of my mac, but are there any good introductory resource sites beyond apple's own?

 

A good desktop themes site for mac?

 

Thanks,

 

kaka

[goDel]

If you want to run some windows OS next to OSX use Parallels, VMWare Fusion or that free one Virtual box (?). You can do almost anything from within a virtual machine. And performance issues are rare if noticeable at all. (apart from running 3D games and all that). Dual booting is simply too much hassle.

[Guest futuregirlfriend]

http://synergy-foss.org/ though haven't used it myself.

[Hautlle]

There are definitely good versions of Win7 floating around

[Guest 277: 930-933]

goDel's got it right, get VirtualBox (it's free) and run a virtual machine with win7, been using this setup on a macbook pro for a few months now without any issues.

As for controlling both your computers from one keyboard, maybe try screensharing the pc and control it from your macbook?

This could work if you only need to do some adding of porn torrents or starting the playback of a pornographic movie on your PC, if you want to type up long reviews of porn from your mac on your pc then you might get annoyed by lag/slow screen refresh rate.

[Ego]

http://synergy-foss.org/ though haven't used it myself.

 

I've used this and it works like a charm.

 

If you take the virtualisation route, I think Parallels offers much better integration than VirtualBox. VirtualBox is free though.

[kakapo]

Thanks everyone, going to give synergy a go, if it works how I want it to I'll be very happy.

[ganus]

Funny that this thread should pop up, because I spent all of last night trying to install OSX on an old intel laptop with iATKOS. It supposedly installed successfully, but I'm getting a symbol after a while on the grey apple screen when it boots up, and it never finishes loading. Sorry to hijack the thread a little bit, but anyone had any success with installing OSX on an intel pc and want to share some tips with me?

[kakapo]

Is anybody using a usb display adaptor to get a 2nd extra external monitor output? Working ok?

[Bubba69]

synergy. A KVM doesn't really make sense unless you have a bunch of machines in a testing environment that you need to switch between. Synergy will work over the network

[Guest futuregirlfriend]

anyone had any success with installing OSX on an intel pc and want to share some tips with me?

 

I got snow leopard working perfectly on my desktop (q6600) with a retail disc and iboot. Things may have changed a little since http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/

 

I say disc, it was a dmg that i had to unpack to a usb stick with transmac.