[mattintx]

I'm thinking about ditching my windows media centers in favor of a Mac mini with apple tvs.


Anyways there are a couple of programs (VERY low requirements) that I need to keep running but aren't available on a Mac. I know I could run them in the background using parallels.


Will this slow the Mac mini down significantly? Basically I won't ever use windows but need it and a few small programs running in the background of lion. The Mac mini will basically be used just for an iTunes server with the windows stuff running in the background

Thoughts.?

 

[madSkeelz]

It'd probably be fine, but you really would be better off finding Mac-based alternatives to your background programs. [A Unix alternative would probably run without alteration on Mac OS as well.]


The added expense of a Parallels and Windows license, plus the added management/maintenance and what-not is kind of a bummer, is all.

 

[mongo22]

You could try running Crossover on the mac. Its a Windows emulator but you dont need to install Windows or have Windows running in the background. It doesnt support all Windows programs but ive got it to run a few that werent supported. Might be worth a shot.

I use Crossover mainly for running mkv2vob which converts .mkv files to .mp4 without re-encoding the whole movie. Takes only a few min to do a full movie. I couldnt find anything on the Mac side that was simple (and free!) to do it but now with mkv2vob ran by Crossover it works great with low overhead.


Heres the website: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover/

 

[mattintx]

Thanks for the replys


The reason I need windows is to keep a USB thinkstick running to control all the zwave modules throughout my house. It sounds like I might be better off searching for a zwave controller thats made to run in lion

 

[madSkeelz]

You might be boned: http://www.waynedaltonstore.com/prod...cd-wdusb-10mac


I'm not into the whole home automation thing, but I have a buddy that uses Insteon stuff with his Mac. [I realize that switching your entire house over is probably not a great solution.]


Running the Z-Wave software isn't a big deal. It's the overhead of keeping Windows running that's kind of a drag. You'll be running two OSs on one computer, all the time.


Is there not a Java-based or Linux-friendly Z-Wave console thingy? [Those would probably work well enough on OS X.]

 

[Laminar]

VirtualBox is a free alternative to Parallels, and it's easy enough to get an old copy of XP Pro running without too many licensing issues...


8GB of RAM is cheap and with that much memory you won't have any issues with the load you're proposing.