Toolbox on Mac

[Honeyman Tom]

Hi Mark,

I have both used parallels and crossover. I have also used just the plain wine installation on OS X, and if you're handy with a command line, this will save you having to pay for crossover. Make sure you have a later version of X11 if you do this.

PC Emulator: Parallels, VMWare Fusion (haven't tried others, QEMU-based ones horribly slow and buggy)
Pros: you can install not just toolbox, but also other PC software.
Cons: Bigger hit on your processor, more expensive, especially if you have to purchase a windows license.

Windows Emulator: Wine+X11 or Crossover (also wine based).
Pros: less of a processor hit
Cons: Occasionally buggy, limited to toolbox. I have been unable to get other SIL software to work, thanks to heavy use of .NET framework.

In the end, I've always been used to toolbox crashing, and so I save regularly, and I'm happier with the lower processor hit. Sometimes I find the key combo changes a bit annoying. If you see yourself migrating to newer SIL software in the future, you may prefer the flexibility of a PC emulator.

I have used Toolbox in wine on Ubuntu 9, but not extensively. I didn't have any problems (beyond the usual) when I did though.

-tom

On 18/05/2010, at 1:23 PM, Mark Post wrote:

> Dear RNLD-ers,
> 
> I am currently contemplating switching to a MacBook for my field laptop for various reasons (viruses, reliability, speed, video-editing capabilities, etc.), but quite honestly cannot imagine a world without Toolbox.
> 
> I was wondering whether anyone on the list has used recent versions of Toolbox (post-1.5) with CrossOverMac or Wine (Windows emulators) extensively, and if so what your experiences have been like.
> 
> If anyone has any similar experiences with Ubuntu 9 or 10, I'd be grateful for any information on that as well, although less urgently.
> 
> Many thanks in advance,
> 
> Mark
> 
> -- 
> Mark W. Post, PhD
> Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Anthropological Linguistics
> The Cairns Institute
> James Cook University
> QLD 4878 Australia
> 
> EML: mark.post at jcu.edu.au
> TEL: +61-7-4042-1881 (AU)
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> 
> Web: http://jamescook.academia.edu/MarkWPost
>