Any mac users doing .NET out there?

[Bobby Edward]

I'm thinking about purchasing an iMac.

I have been researching VMware Fusion, Book Camp, Parallels, etc... on the
Mac, which will allow you to run Windows.

Question: For you mac users. Can you describe your experience using Visual
Studio.NET on a Mac? Any suggestions on the software to use to run Windows?

Your thoughts are appreciated...

 

[Guest]

I'm thinking about purchasing an iMac.

I have been researching VMware Fusion, Book Camp, Parallels, etc... on the
Mac, which will allow you to run Windows.

Question:  For you mac users.  Can you describe your experience using Visual
Studio.NET on a Mac?  Any suggestions on the software to use to run Windows?

Your thoughts are appreciated...

You can also install mono and use monodevelop (sharpdevelop) instead
of using VS.Net.

 

[bruce barker]

i do asp.net development and sharepoint development on my macbook pro. I
use parallels (and multiple VM's running server 2008 64bit & 32 bit).

fusion is a tad quicker, but parallels has better mac integration, such
as being able to access the vm disks without booting the vm. i have both
(they are cheap enough).

you should have at least 4gb of memory but you might want more (imac
goes to 8gb, but don't buy memory from apple). you may also want a
separate drive (use firewire) to host the vm's.

developing in vm's is the future (almost required), and currently the
mac has much better vm support then windows.

-- bruce (sqlwork.com)

 

[Ben G.]

I have a MacBook Pro and run VirtualBox as my VM platform. (It's free from
Sun.) I run Windows XP as the guest OS, and Visual Studio 2008 and .NET
Framework 3.5. The performance is naturally a little slower than running
native, but is acceptable.

 

[Brian Simmons]

After almost 20 years on a PC, this past January, after doing a lot of
research, I was sold on the Mac Book Pro (15'', 4Gb, 320HD 7200RPM).
I will never go back.

I run Parallels (bunch of different OS's, W2K, XP, Vista) and I do just fine
with my VS .net 2005 installation. In fact, it runs faster than my previous
HP laptop.

Almost everything on the Mac is better than it's Windows counterpart. And
with Parallels (which is peanuts, $70 roughly) you have the best of both
worlds.

 

[Bobby Edward]

Thanks! Few questions:

1. Can you backup the whole parallels enviro easily? Is it just 1 big
file?
2. Can you boot into bootcamp and work with visual studio using files on
your parallels enviro?

Thanks!

 

[Brian Simmons]

Hi Bobby,

Parallels stores it's virtuals in a single file (*.pvm), which is very
similar to Virtual PC's *.vhd files. In fact, Parallels can import and
convert *.vhd files, which saved me a ton of time.
So, backing up the *.pvm files is a piece of cake.

To answer you second question: No. When you boot into Bootcamp, essentially
your Mac-side of computing is lost, you're truly in a Windows-only world.
Which is why I don't even bother with Bootcamp, Parallels is by far the best
solution and it's reasonably priced at about $75 USD.

hth,
Brian

 

[Bobby Edward]

Great! Do you know if Parallel environments can get files from each other?
Let's say I have 2 XP Parallel environments...

Thanks