productivity on the Mac

By Louis, 21 January, 2013

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Hello folks, Despite my best efforts I have not been able to find programs that will allow me to be as productive on the Mac as I am with Microsoft Office on Windows. I tried using Bootcamp but I was not able to get past the install process. I was informed that I had to reformat my drive because Windows was not compatible. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated. At this point I am considering buying a cheap netbook for Microsoft Office. However, I would much rather run Windows with Bootcamp if possible.

Options

Comments

By Musicruz on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - 23:53

I've been using my iMac for over a year now, and yet, I haven't found a great productivity software as well. My suggestion for you is to run a Virtual Machine instead with VMWare fusion and then install Microsoft office suite on it. As long you have all the necessary files, the installation process is very acccessible.

Hi. Boot camp does work, but I used sighted help. there is a guide, on this site, that saysyou can do it without assistance. I'm not sure i'm comfortable enough to do that, but I don't remember how expensive vm ware is. Also you need to understand that unless you are talking about windows eight, you'll want some version of windows seven either in vm ware or boot camp since to my knowledge, the software on the mac only supports seven for now. I'm sorry I'm not more help.

Based on the VMWare fusion web site as of now, http://store.vmware.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=vmware&id=ProductDetailsPage&productID=165310200 , it is 49.99$. Personally, VM is more practical choice than buying another notebook computer, for the sake of productivity software.

By Chelsea on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - 23:53

You need to set aside room for your boot camp partition, and then reformat that logical drive. If partititioning has gone well, nothing on your Mac should be affected.

I just successfully went through the Boot Camp installation today. Chelsea makes an excellent point, that you have to format the partition before installing Windows. Admittedly, I had some sighted help, which I do not believe you could do without because once Boot Camp starts, you are in Windows with no speech. There is an excellent MacWorld article, simply Google macworld boot camp and you can find it. The formatting is required and, so long as you have partitioned the HD correctly, only the Windows portion is formatted. As for using VMware Fusion, it's my next step. My logic was to get Windows (and in my case JAWS) running on the MacBook Air as two separate machines before trying the virtual machine path. I have succeeded so far, but it will be another day before I try FUsion. The Windows/JAWS combination works very well and you can flip back and forth between systems very easily.