When I bought the new MacBook Pro, I also obtained Parallels so I can run Windows apps as and when required, side-by-side in the Mac OS. I’d forgotten quite how painful it can be dealing with Microsoft.
I have a valid license for XP and while that was installing I made lunch. I wanted to install Office Professional 2007 as I have a genuine license key courtesy of the Convergence folk. Except the URL I was pointed towards took me nowhere particularly useful. The link is dead. Having got past that glitch I was faced with 2 downloads totalling 635MB. Gulp! But then I found I need XP SP2. A further 266 MB download. Duh? Why can’t Microsoft run a pre-flight check to ensure I have everything needed instead of throwing out an error and telling me to go find it for myself? As I write this, I’m still waiting for the SP2 download to finish.
Then I thought I’d install Live Writer. Except that also needs the .NET framework. Again, more time wasted finding files. Double duh!
No wonder people become frustrated with Microsoft. No wonder it costs real money to support the Microsoft desktop.
Mind you, Mac developers aren ‘t perfect. I’d like to run Parallels in Coherence Mode. This would allow me to run Windows apps directly inside the Mac OS rather than switching between the two. Except I’m damned if I can find the Coherence icon on the default Windows desktop or ‘actions’ in the Parallels Desktop menu bar.
There’s no screenshot to show me what these look like so at the moment I’m stuck.
What a way to be spending a UK Bank Holiday. Except it isn’t where I live. Ho hum.
Aside: Note Blue Monster logo on the T-shirt.
Update: The version of Parallels I was sold is out of date and it didn’t run an auto-update when it ran. Triple duh! Gary T decided my original pic might upset a few folk so he kindly applied a little magic. The image you now see is the result of that. Note the colouring to the Blue Monster. Nice.
Technorati Tags: blue monster, Convergence 2007, LiveWriter, Office Professional 2007, parallel coherence
