Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Re: reaching network drives through VPNunderXP Pro virtualized by Parallels on Mac OS X?

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Dec 2, 2007 7:26 AM, Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:

On Dec 2, 2007 12:18 AM, Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> I haven't bothered upgrading to Leopard yet - I'll let others work out the
> bugs and then switch.

They have 10.5.1 out already, so I think the show-stoppers are all
gone. Time Machine as a back-up concept is very nice, and I will admit
that I have found "cover-flow" view in finder very useful when I am
looking for a specific image. Safari 3.0 is nice, but you can get that
with 10.4.11. There are more improvements to Preview and TextEdit (a
very under-rated application).

Time machine seems a good idea but I've had a better, IMO, version on my Linux systems for a while and I keep important files on my Linux servers anyway. It sounded like it requires a second hdd too (not sure about this) which won't work very well with my iMac.

I can't say I do much manual file browsing either - mostly I drop to the command-line to find stuff if it's buried very much. I keep my files very organized though so even that is rarely needed.

I'm still not much of a Safari fan. I mostly use it for testing to make sure stuff works in Safari. Less important for the Mac since they made it available for Windows.

Preview is handy - probably my favortie PDF reader although it does have it's quirks. Maybe they've fixed some of them.

I use nano from the command-line for text editing.

I have never once used Spaces. In the era of tabbed browsing and a
good keyboard interface to navigate among windows, it doesn't add much
for me. Overall, there are a lot of things that are just nicer.

I use virtual machines where I may have once have used Spaces. I still frequently have many apps open at once but they are divided into different virtual machines. I'm pushing VMWare to improve Fusion to be more Spaces-like. (Also pushing them to make VMWare into it's own desktop environment in Linux.)
 

There is one *major* misfeature, which is the new translucent main
menu bar. That was just a horrible idea, and one I really hope they
will revert.

It looks sort of lame. Another example of Apple applying eye candy in stupid ways. Of course I'm still annoyed that they switched from the nice white look of the iMac (and iPod) to the retro chrome look. :)

I don't see anything earth-shattering (oh yeah: terminal got better,
and the default installations of things like ruby are more sensible).

Any chance they made the home and end keys behave properly? THAT is a feature I'd like.

> If anything I sort of wish that Fusion wasn't quite so oriented towards normal
> people. It's sacrificed some power for ease of use IMO. The only real
> nagging issues with Fusion is that it can act oddly with certain keystrokes
> and mouse combos - evidently if the host OS and guest OS are both trying to
> do something with them.

This is not an easy problem. Parallels lets you specifically capture
the mouse and keyboard in your virtual machine apps and then
deliberately release them. So far that's worked out fine for me.

 

You can manually catch and release in Fusion but usually I opt for the default behavior of letting things free float between. The biggest problems seem to happen when I have Windows intergrate into OS X so that Windows apps are just app windows like any others. In that mode OS X gets first chance at special keys. I also don't like that Windows apps retain their Windows chrome so that the minimize and close buttons are on the wrong side of the windows.

> Like the ERP software I use (Intuit/Activant
> Eclipse) is retarded and uses the F12 key to go back sometimes and it can
> act oddly in certain situations.

Most uses of F-keys are pretty F-ed up.

Eclipse is very F-ed up. I'm actively looking for a replacement because it's very expensive, buggy, slow, undocumented, and just plain f-ed up. Trying to figure out if OpenBravo or a similar opensource ERP platform could handle our needs better. We pay around $50,000/year just for support and the support really isn't very good. I'd love to donate that money to an opensource project instead and have our needs satisfied better.

So it sounds like you want Fusion to be sort of a VNC tool as well? I
think I can see the usefulness in your case, but I think the two
functions are distinct. Dunno if Parallels would do that.

Fusion does have VNC built-in but it's an undocumented feature and requires manual editing of the config file. It only works as a server though and not a client. VMWare's standard remote access is better in that it performs much faster than VNC does and you can control things like your hardware options and power resets. There is no version of VMWare Console for OS X though so I can't use it from my Mac unless I run it in one of my virtual machines on an OS that it does run on. Sort of a pain.

My main reason for sticking to Fusion is that I run VMWare products on my Linux and Windows machines and on my server so it made sense for me to stick to what I know. I probably won't switch until there is an opensource competitor that does everything I need.
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