virtualization

Myra recently got an M1 Mac Mini to replace her old Windows machine. How can she run her Windows teaching programs with her new Mac? She hears that Parallels isn't perfect for running Windows virtually.

Leo says that the M1 doesn't use BootCamp anymore, so it is virtually the only option now. Leo says that VMWare Fusion is the other virtual option. But both VMWare and Parallels have yet to release an M1 version. However, Parallels has released a technical preview version that you could try. But there is another challenge. You need a special version of Windows.

Sarafine has a MacBook Air and two old PCs with unique programs on them that she uses. How can she consolidate them? She doesn't have installation discs. Leo says that Virtualization could work and have Sarafine can then eliminate both those old PCs. VMWare or Parallels is what Leo recommends. It will then enable Sarafine to run Windows virtually and access the data from the Cloud or an external hard drive. That way she won't have to worry about those old PCs dying on her. She can create a drive image of the hard drives and then open that image within Virtual Machine. 

Terry has a MacBook Air, running Parallels so he can dual boot into Windows. After he upgraded to Windows 10, however, he had to upgrade Parallels and it trashed the drive. So he rebooted and reinstalled everything, and now Parallels wants him to pay for it again. Leo says that somewhere on the drive was a hidden file, perhaps in the application support folder, that has his registration data. So if he formatted the hard drive, Terry lost that data. Leo also says he'll have to reinstall Windows 7 again after installing Parallels.

Steve has a Windows 10 machine that he also runs Hyper-V Virtual Machine on, but he loses access to his USB ports in doing so. How can he access USB through Virtual Machine? Leo says it could be in the settings. VMWare has that access. He should look in the settings and see if he has to enable and assign it.

The chatroom says that Microsoft wants you to use Remote Desktop to pass it along. That seems counter-intuitive, but it may be that Microsoft didn't want to compete with VMWare.

Jim bought a new Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and he only gets a few hours of battery life. Leo says that Microsoft is sorely aware of the issues and is promising to push out an update to patch it. The issue is the new Intel Skylake processor that Microsoft says has an issue with power management. Leo says it will get better.

Troy has been trying out Windows 10 on his iMac and he really likes it. He's wondering if he can dump OS X completely and just run Windows through Boot Camp. Leo's been running it virtually and he says that's the best way to run it. Boot Camp just provides drivers to run Windows on the Mac. Troy could in theory delete the Mac partition, but Leo recommends keeping it because it'll update the drivers. He can make the partition smaller, though. If he's only going to get Windows, Leo suggests a Windows PC.

Leo says VMWare is the king. It's his first choice. Windows Pro has Hyper V, but Leo says VMWare is the way to go. There's also the free choice, Virtual Box, but it's fairly limited.

Jeff is making the switch to Mac and he's going to need to use both Windows and Mac for a while. Leo says that there's a few ways to skin that cat including running Windows with Boot Camp, where you'll get to choose between Windows and OS X at boot up. You'll need your own copy of Windows, but it works really well. The second option is to run Windows virtually inside of OS X, and that way, you can just have a little sandboxed Windows window and what's good about that is that you have several options including Virtual Box, Parallels, and VMWare Fusion.

Ooma needs a new computer and she's heard that Quickbooks and Excel doesn't work well on Mac. Leo says that there is a Mac version of Excel, and there is an online version of Quickbooks, but it's better to use in Windows.

Will Windows 7 be supported for awhile? Leo says yes. Microsoft will support it until at least 2020 for extended support, but Microsoft will end mainstream support in January 2015. Security wise, they will support it through 2020. Leo also says this is why Microsoft is pushing Windows 8 hard. Windows 9 is next year, too. But Ooma has until 2020 to change OS.

Skip has a business that he runs off of a dedicated PC and he wants to help a friend start a similar business. He wants to be able to clone his hard drive and ship it to him so he can run it as well. Would that work? Leo says yes and no.