For my application, Boot Camp or VMFusion?

[entatlrg]

Within the past year I've switched my company completely to Mac's, we're all very pleased.

I find myself needing to use one program that requires Windows and that's Microsoft Publisher. I use Publisher with a combination of text and photo's to create/draft Instruction Manuals and Booklets,to do initial concept drawings for parts and consumer products, a web page layout and occasionally to draft brochures.

On my other Mac I've been running boot camp, it works but I'd rather be able to run both OS X and Vista side by side. Too often I'll be working in Publisher and want to use a photo stored on the OS X, so I have to reboot, get the photo and then boot back into Vista. I realize there's half a dozen other maybe better ways to do it, but for my needs which is 'best' I can't decide.

For my new 13" MBP I'd like to set it up better if I could. To be able to access all folders and files in either OS at the same time would be great.

I've considered storing all my 'active' files on my Time Capsule, then I could access my files from any computer and any OS, there's also Drop Box and Sugar Sync, and Backpack to organize files, and that's why my next post will be about But that's the secondary step after I've decided how to install Vista.

What should I do? Load Bootcamp on my new 13" MBP or try VM or Parallels?

Thank you.

 

[Bill Gates]

Ideally you would opt for option #3, which is to install CrossOver Mac. Then you can forget about the overhead of running a VM and just run Publisher side-by-side with native applications. However, as a distant second, I would recommend using VMware Fusion or VirtualBox to run Windows alongside Mac OS X. You shouldn't need to allocate too much in the way of resources to the VM for Publisher alone, but it will still be using an order of magnitude more than CrossOver. If you haven't bought anything yet then I would recommend downloading a free trial of CrossOver Mac onto one machine to test with Publisher, and if everything works as expected, go ahead and purchase a copy. Note that Publisher 2007 has only received a "bronze" level compatibility rating, so it may or may not work perfectly. Check and make sure that it saves correctly as a thread from a year ago indicated problems, but that may or may not still be the case. Publisher 2003 appears to fare much better.

Useful links:
CrossOver Mac website
Compatibility page for Publisher 2007
Compatibility page for Publisher 2003

 

[entatlrg]

Thank you! Very helpful.

 

[DoFoT9]

+1 for another cross-over vote.

however if you find it not suitable enough for your needs (not enough support etc), a VM is the answer.

 

[Kelmon]

Silly question but have you considered native Mac applications instead of MS Publisher? For example, Apple's own Pages application is pretty reasonable for doing page layouts and is relatively cheap.

Failing this you could also consider installing Snow Leopard and Boot Camp 3.0 since the new drivers give Windows read-only access to your Mac partition so you could indeed use photographs stored on the Mac partition without needing to reboot. Personally, I work with Windows XP via a Parallels Desktop 4.0 VM and find this to be faster than VMWare's Fusion 2.0 application. I have no experience with either VirtualBox or CrossOver.

 

[entatlrg]

Silly question but have you considered native Mac applications instead of MS Publisher? For example, Apple's own Pages application is pretty reasonable for doing page layouts and is relatively cheap.

Yes, that's my next task ... to learn Adobe Illustrator or a similar drawing program. I've tried the simpler programs for Mac like EasyDraw and while it's nice software I have to go through the learning curve I guess to be as fast as I am with Publisher.

If I could take the time I think Illustrator would be the answer plus allow me to do more advanced things ... I'm a novice level professional

This evening I'm going to update my new MacBook Pro to Snow Leopard then install VM Fusion and Vista.

I'm happy about that, now I can finally organize my files and folders, keep everything in Mac OS and grab what I need from there to do my work in Publisher, cool!

Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll post back how all this upgrading and installing goes