Thursday, January 15, 2009

A new Mac user is born...

Buying an iphone last August did it to me. I switched from being a troden Wintel user for years to a Mac maniac. After the iphone, I bought the new 13 inch laptop, and now a beautiful 24 inch display. Even though I am still working out the kinks here and there, I was up to production speed in no time. Of course, I also assiduously been ignoring some of the applications that still only run on Windows. PLS (Partial Least Squares), one of our prominent statistical packages in IS, is one of these non-conform applications; and so is SnagIt. For SnagIt I found a nice alternative created by TechSmith itself called Jing; for PLS however, I'm afraid efforts will be hopeless. Vehemently withstanding the option of installing a Windows virtual machine, I asked my top tech pro resource Daniel from RICS. He told me about a little emulator (versus a full fledged virtual machine) called Crossover Mac that should be able to handle most of the Windows apps. The only drawback: it is not for free. What will my open source heart say to this one?
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1 comment:

  1. jlroldan67February 4, 2009 at 5:51 AM

    Hi Iris,

    I'm José L Roldán, from University of Seville (Spain). I'm also a switched from 15 months ago. After 19 years of wintel experience, I'm discovering and enjoying of the new world of Mac. Concerning programs that still work only in windows, e.g. PLS-Graph, the approach that I follow is to use the application remote desktop:

    http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/remote-desktop/default.mspx

    Given that I preserve my old PC, I access to that PC (with my old windows programs) via remote desktop. This works perfectly.

    Best regards,

    José L.

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