Help me educate a friend

[synapco]

It has taken me 3 years, but I have finally convinced my friend to move to a Mac. He plans on buying an iMac 24" with 2GB of memory along with the biggest hard drive and most current video card in the next two months.

He publishes a 16 to 22 page monthly newsletter using Corel. He has been doing this for the last 17 years. Therefore, he has hundreds if not thousands of Corel files he does not want to part with. He is hoping that slowly over the next year or so he can convert his files to be used in Adobe and or recreate files as needed under CS3.

Would VMware be a viable alternative to my friend to continue to use Corel during this period? I thought at one time I read somewhere on this forum that Boot Camp should be used if graphics are heavily used? By the time his publication is complete - the combined file can easily exceed 100MB and I have seen some as large as 350MD.

Appreciate any feedback on this as I am not a DTP expert.

[admin]

The recommendation of BootCamp for graphics applies to 3D acceleration, when Fusion's implementation of DirectX 8.1 is not good enough. I'm not really familiar with Corel, but as a DTP I doubt it makes use of 3D acceleration.

One thing to keep in mind is that with either BootCamp or Fusion, your friend will still be using Corel to access the files - Fusion's not an alternative to Corel, it's an alternative to BootCamp.

My guess is that Fusion should work for this (and if not, he can always fall back to BootCamp). Since he's working with large files, be sure to allocate plenty of memory to the guest (I'd start with 768 MB).

[jas8522]

It might also be good to note the following:

1) Boot Camp and Fusion are both beta - meaning he may not get the support he needs if something goes wrong

2) Parallels does have a final release, but I've heard their support isn't fantastic.

So far I've had great experiences with both Boot Camp and Fusion - with little to no errors and I've found the Fusion support on this Forum alone to be absolutely fantastic... better than most retail products.

Nontheless I felt it should always be remembered - especially considering your friend is working with some important data (it seems).

Jordan

[Andreas_Masur]

1) Boot Camp and Fusion are both beta - meaning he

may not get the support he needs if something goes

wrong

That is true, however, BootCamp has been pretty much working without any issues from the beginning so I would not worry to much about the Beta flag there. Same goes with Fusion...it is pretty much usable however, still has some details to work on. I have never heard of any data loss with either one so far (opposed to the third option).

2) Parallels does have a final release, but I've

heard their support isn't fantastic.

As said above...being a release version does not necessarely mean much...and their support is virtually non-existent.

Thus....out of these three options...and given the task, I would probably suggest using BootCamp for now just for the sake of better and faster 3D support. He can always try to run a Fusion VM off the BootCamp partition just to check the speed etc.

I would however, not think about the third option...just my two cents though...

Ciao, Andreas

[wdeboer]

Corel Draw and co don't use the videocard or thinks like OpenGL to speed up drawing. Meaning you should be fine to try it in the virtual machine. Of course, it will be slower then under Boot Camp. But it should be fast enough for most things.

[Andreas_Masur]

Corel Draw and co don't use the videocard or thinks

like OpenGL to speed up drawing. Meaning you should

be fine to try it in the virtual machine. Of course,

it will be slower then under Boot Camp. But it should

be fast enough for most things.

Well....in this case, I agree...I would give the virtual machine a try...never been a DTP expert...just thought it is more heavy on the graphics side...

Ciao, Andreas

[synapco]

Thanks to all that have replied.

I believe I will install Boot Camp first, then VMWare and let my friend run each to see which solution he determines is best for him. Who knows by then maybe we will see beta 4 of VMware and another upgrade to Boot Camp.

Thanks.