I once tried a mac but I do like some audio games and was never able to get VMware to work correctly. I am now using a Surface Book but don't get me started on the hardware issues I have with it.
So here's the questions I have and let's see what solutions the hive mind of apple vis come up with. For Audio gaming I want VMWare. How do I map the keys correctly to get it to work flawlessly? I could never get a key mapped to work as the NVDA key in the past. I also had trouble making sure I stayed in the VMWare window and did not stray back into OS unexpectedly.
Second word processing and excel. Am I better off just using pages or are there ways I am unaware of to make both easier to formatt especially excel?
Finally I am taking the courses at Free Code Camp. Will I be able to navigate them in Crome on the mac or will I have to use windows? Also will I have any trouble using Notepad++?
Thanks in advance and I look forward to the responces.
Comments
Why do you want a Mac?
Sounds like you already know how to use all of the tools that Windows provides and with which you are comfortable. What is your reason for wanting to switch to a Mac?
I had a friend years ago who just had a terrible time with Windows. She was told that everything was much more simple and straightforward on a Mac. She was not blind.
Anyway, despite our advice, she bought a Mac. of course she immediately had trouble using it. So she finally fished in for some classes at the Apple Store along with the associated support help.
one day she was frustrated and asked her instructor how to do something on the Mac. The instructor asked, "Well, how did you do that in Windows?". Her response was that she couldn't do it in Windows which was why she bought a Mac.
Needless to say, it was all downhill from there. She wound up being just as frustrated with her Mac as she was with her old Windows system. Sometimes there just isn't any "magic" in the world.
Anyway, think about what tasks you need to do and what if any of these tasks is easier on a PC or Mac. Another thing to consider, although some programs like Pages might be free on the Mac, the Mac starts out being more expensive and you have to look at total cost.
Hope that helps.
--Pete
--Pete
NVDA Key
What kind of Mac did you use? I have a full Mac keyboard on my iMac. It has the number pad on the right side. It's been quite some time since I've done it, but if memory serves,I either turned off VoiceOver or made sure the numbed commander was disabled. That allowed me to use the 0 on the number pad as the NVDA key. Of course, you don't need a Mac keyboard to do this. A full sized Windows keyboard will also work. It's just that the windows key becomes the command key and the alt key becomes the option key.
Answering both why I want a Mac and What I have used
I actually did enjoy using it in the past. The touch pad gestures as well as the way you navigate with the keyboard reminded me of the iPhone which was much more intuitive. I also wouldn’t be spending anything because it was my wife’s previous MacBook and I still have it. To answer the other poster’s question it was the last model before the Touch Bar came out so 2016 I think. My wife bought me the Surface Book as a present approximately a year ago and while switching back to windows has been easy enough I have had enough of the hardware issues that I have with it and my screen reader crashing.
Just use bootcamp instead of VMWare
I got a Macbook air in 2013 and used Bootcamp to run windows as my primary OS on it. It meant that if I wanted to use Mac OS I had to reboot the machine but considering the fact I decided I preferred Windows to Mac OS it was a pretty good solution. I wouldn't normally recommend this since you can get decent Windows laptops for a lot cheaper then mac's but since the hardware is free in your case I would go the bootcamp route. All it will cost you is about $100 for a Windows home license.
The downside I see to cool booting
Unfortunately this computer only has a 128 GB hard drive, I say only 128 GB like I wouldn’t have killed for that as a teenager, so by the time you partition it you’re really getting small. If I were to run Windows on a Virtual machine on the other hand Windows would only take up the size of the file on the hard drive. On the other hand I would share resources. I have 8 GB of ram but I don’t remember right now what the processor in it is.
Regardding word processing and excel
Hi.
If you really want to do things like word processing and calculations and work with tables you are better off with windows. I find that word is much more responsible and intuitive on Windows, on Mac excel doesn't even work smoothly as far as I know, apparently there is also an issue with word not reading the text arria.
Also, browsing the web is much more intuitive and faster with windows in my opinion.
What hardware issues do you actually have with your surface book? I wanted to get one myself.
greetings Moritz.
re: SurfaceBook hardware issues
First looking back I wrote this more as a release valve than anything. As I think I mentioned earlier in the thread, I don't know I've slept since then, I've run a Mac before. I had just been having a lot of trouble with the SurfaceBook that particular day and it was a spur of the moment thought.
As far as my hardware issues with the Surface Book 2 I don't think it's all of them just the one I have. The first one I had got hit with an electrical serge, not sure how but that was the best guess of Microsoft, and they replaced it. Up until that point it worked excellent and I had nothing but good things to say about it. Because the keyboard half got fried they replaced the whole computer and that was where the problems started. Randomly, only while I have headphones plugged into the headphone jack, my screen reader will quit reading as if it has crashed. I can unplug the headphones and it will speak through the speakers but if I plug the headphones back in it still speaks through the speakers even though it shows it's using headphones in sound settings and jaws settings. The only way to get it to speak through the headphones is to restart. It has happened both with JAWS and NVDA so it's not specific to 1 screen reader but without a screen reader running my wife could not get it to do it.
It's true I could use bluetooth and I sometimes do but I set my screen readers fast enough that sometimes the first part of the first word gets cut off which is a pet peeve of mine. Almost 2 weeks ago I ordered a headphone jack to USB converter from Amazon which finally arrived this morning, damn Coronavirus, and I'm trying it to see if it's only the headphone jack and the USB will work fine. I can't find anyone else having the problem and I can't make it happen on demand to show Microsoft so Hopefully this works.
Other than that I actually really like the computer. Hardware wise it's on par with the MacBook Pro only without the silly touch bar and with more options for ports. I never seem to use the tablet function though it's there I just don't think about it. I get close to the battery life of a MacBook Pro with it. I've been running it for right at 3.5 hours this morning and have 73% battery remaining. It's not always that good depending on what I'm doing but at least it gives you an idea. Finally the keyboard is probably the best keyboard I've ever used on a laptop though that is obviously completely subjective.
If you have any other questions I can answer for you feel free to ask and let me know if you would like the results of the headphone through USB test.