Mac Operating system on a windows based computer ....

[NateJ]

For the techies out there, I know what you are going to say ... All I will say is I am sorry uppy_dog

My partner had to buy a new laptop the weekend just gone, following her old one sparking and smoking ... She's a secondary school teacher, so as you can imagine, it was panic stations!

We tried curry's first, but the staff there were less than helpful, and at times didn't seem to know anything about the products (being new laptops) we were asking for information on - So we scooted on over to Tesco's.

Long story short, Her indoors ended up (and by my recommendation somehow) with a MacBook Pro for £999.99.

I set everything up for her, but in the process, I fell in love with how sleek and responsive the Operating System was ... And now I want to install Mountain Lion on my windows based machine.

Obviously, I am expecting issues with incompatibility given the fact that the Hardware within my Computer was built for use with a Windows based O/S ... But I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work?

Am I being a tad too adventures??

 

[Dunx]

http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-install-os-x-mountain-lion-hackintosh-on-a-pc-tutorial/

Although I can see it not being smooth sailing with the number of variables in a pc's hardware, without the support that other operating systems get

 

[sandbender]

You can do it, you might find it easier with one of the earlier os's like Tiger, Mountain Lion is very demanding of the machine you are running on, even if it is a Mac. It is a pain though, not for the non technically minded. Doing things the other way and running Windows on your Apple is a breeze though.

 

[vinnyp68]

Have your own user account on her mac, and then when you get your own migrate you account to your own mac, apple make that easy too

 

[ged]

One reason why the Mac experience is smooth is that the hardware and the software are to some extent designed for each other. When Windows installs itself on a computer it might have to decide from a cast of thousands what each device in the computer might be by sending thousands of little electronic queries and waiting for a reply which might never come back because there's nothing there capable of understanding that particular query. On a Mac, the software whic came with it knows exactly what's in the computer, so it can be thousands of times quicker to do some parts of the installation.

If you have enough resources on your PC you can run something like VirtualBox on it, and run other operating systems as guests -- all at once if you like, and if the PC is up to it. I routinely run three or four different operating systems at once on some of my machines, and up to a dozen or so on one of them.

 

[mrcharly]

What ged said.

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

It's called a hackentosh and it's not worth the effort, It can be done and I have done it myself in the past but the time and effort just isn't worth it.

If you really want to use a Unix like OS on your PC look into linux and dual boot or use a virtual machine if you want I can recommend some VM software and toss a couple of VM images in your direction.

 

[NateJ]

Thanks for the replies.

I figured it would be a bit of a nightmare to do, and my computer specifications really aren't the best (Killed my last machine, so using downgraded parts in this one) ... the only decent bit of kit in the computer is the graphics card which is a 8800GTX.

I've tried the asking her route, and it was a no go sadly ... Yet the moment she gets any problems on it it's me she asks to sort it out

I did read some of the tutorials on the web, including hackintosh ... It just seems like too much work to get something that may or may not run properly on the system :/

I shall stick to windows me thinks, so the question now is do I switch to windows 8, remain with windows 7 (currently installed) or go back to xp?

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

It would be handy to know the specs of your machine, but as a rule avoid windows 8 like the plague.

 

[Dunx]

Personally not had any experience with win 8... But dont think its worthwhile unless you have a touch screen looking at the interface

 

[sandbender]

Windows 7 seems quite serviceable, but at the end of the day these are only the OS's, many folks are doing all their computery stuff via the internet these days, so unless you need to run a specific bit of software that has a specific OS requirement, does it matter?

The Chrome browser looks and performs pretty much the same on my Apple, My old Windows box (XP) and my Ubuntu machine. MY Dropbox folder is perhaps easier to navigate around on the Apple, but only just.

Microsoft Office? I haven't used a copy for years, Google allow to look at and modify spreadsheets or word documents my clients send me.

It would be nice if someone could convince folks to stop using Autodesk with a better offering, but so far no one has so I'm stuck with a copy running on a Windows XP VM image running on VMWare on my barely functional seven old Apple laptop.

 

[Paul_B]

Wasn't there something on the news about windows 8 being re-done? Something Mr Gates said. Then went on to say everyone will be switching from Apple and Android tablets to MS!!!

 

[Paul_B]

Forgot to say I had an old works laptop that ran a VM on XP in the past so I could use a W95 based custom program. It was a VM on the server that I had to log onto to use before it got migrated to my laptop. It was slow when on the server and virtually impossible on the laptop. A new IT gut came in and tried to copy a log file across to a memory stick (wordpad file IIRC and tiny file size) and it took about 40 minutes because of the VM running in the background. Probably down to the way it was set up I suppose but still causes me nightmares where I had major important deadlines and I needed to use this VM in the past. <shudders>

 

[sandbender]

Wasn't there something on the news about windows 8 being re-done? Something Mr Gates said. Then went on to say everyone will be switching from Apple and Android tablets to MS!!!

Wasn't that the Microsoft CEO Steve "the iPhone has &#8220;no chance&#8221; of gaining significant market share" Ballmer?

The next Microsoft OS upgrade is codenamed 'Blue' we'll see it in the summer, it may be rubbish, but then again Microsoft's new take on webmail 'Outlook' is surprisingly good and pleasant to use, so who knows.

 

[vinnyp68]

the point is the Apple GUI is very easy to use today, and always has been. We heard all this from microsoft when Vista was due out and that went well for them.......NOT. Windows 7 was supposed to be the mac killer and now 8. It will be better if they copy the rest of the features in OSX.

 

[NateJ]

I did have a dabble at windows 8 when it first come out, got rid of it after the first 20 minutes - Too much had changed, whilst it was also lacking in the security department with too many loopholes for invaders to attack me (I hacked my own machine via a laptop in the next town) .. that being said, these have probably been repaired so I don't actually have any new experiences from it.

Windows 7 I've had since it come out, and it's also something I've sworn by when doing new installations for friends and family - Before that it was Xp SP2 (SP3 I didn't like).

My machine specs are:

AMD 64 x2; 2.6Ghz
2Gig of DDR3 ram
Asrock G41M-VS3
250GB HD - Primary
500GB HD - Secondary
x2 1TB HD's - Storage
8800GTX Graphics

The specs used to be much better, but a few months back the computer went bang

My uses would mainly be Photographic, so picture editing software is a must and I love my music and creating new mixes and tracks so that's also a must ... I don't game anymore so I'm not overly fussed on that aspect.

I did think about the VM side of stuff, but surely that would be more hassle than it's worth? Or once through the initial setting up, does it level out and remain stable?

 

[sandbender]

the point is the Apple GUI is very easy to use today, and always has been. We heard all this from microsoft when Vista was due out and that went well for them.......NOT. Windows 7 was supposed to be the mac killer and now 8. It will be better if they copy the rest of the features in OSX.

Here I would disagree, the Apple GUI is less useable today than it was in the past, it is still easier to navigate around files and folders than on Windows machine, but it is becoming too glitzy, too showy, it does too much. They should offer a pared down bare bones mode that gets rid of all the clutter, but they won't.

"...I did think about the VM side of stuff, but surely that would be more hassle than it's worth? Or once through the initial setting up, does it level out and remain stable?.."

I have several Windows and Linux VMs that I run on my old Apple machine, they are fast and stable. I was looking for a new PC recently and was delighted to learn that Windows 7 had an inbuilt Windows XP emulator, sadly that has been done away with in Windows 8.

 

[ged]

...Before that it was Xp SP2 (SP3 I didn't like).

I don't understand. SP3 is just an update to the same OS, it doesn't fundamentally change anything. There is no SP3 for the 64bit version of XP.

My machine specs are: ...

Adequate for almost anything, I'd say, and certainly for the things you've listed.

I did think about the VM side of stuff, but surely that would be more hassle than it's worth? Or once through the initial setting up, does it level out and remain stable?

I found that there was a bit of a learning curve with VMs, as much about learning how to control the VM software itself as anything else, although network connections and screen settings might need a bit of thinking about. But once you get the hang of it you can get a VM up and running from scratch in minutes. You can suspend them in seconds, and then they're using nothing but disc space of which you have plenty. They behave just like you'd expect the real thing to behave with some bonuses. Only you can decide if it's worth the trouble. For me it was a necessity, it eventually saved a lot of work (and hardware and electricity) and it made things relatively easy that without them would have been very tedious, or very expensive, or impossible.

For examples of saving work, you can back up and restore an entire VM essentially by copying a file. If you move a VM from one set of hardware to another, nothing in the VM changes so there is no need to reinstall any drivers or anything like that because the hardware is all virtual hardware and hasn't been changed.

For examples of the impossible, you can transfer a VM from one chunk of computer hardware to another while the VM is running. You can install vrtual hardware into a VM without powering off the real machine. Local hardware can be made availalbe to a remote VM; you can plug a USB device into a VM running on a machine which is physically on the other side of the planet using a USB socket on a computer under your desk. Hardware is virtualized, so you can run some software on a VM even if the hardware on which the VM is running doesn't support it. You can snapshot a virtual Windows machine (takes a couple of seconds), then infect it with a virus to see what happens, then recover the snapshot without any messing about with anti-virus packages and without wondering if it's really all gone. It's possible to recover remotely a Windows virtual machine after it hits the BSOD because the host machine is unaffected.

The list goes on. I don't know how I ever managed without them.

 

[NateJ]

My old system was stable with SP2, upon installing the service pack 3 everything went pear shaped, leading to a fresh instal again.

I'll look into the VM ... sounds like it could (could*) be what I am after