Running “bootcamp” for Quicken or QB

[Matt Townley]

Hi Chris,

I run Quickbooks on Windows XP, which I have running through Parallels 4 on my Macbook Pro. I have a newer MPB with a 2.53 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of ram. Windows runs wonderfully within Parallels and the convenience of being able to keep Quickbooks open in the dock as part of my regular work flow is excellent. Quickbooks is fast and it runs just as well as it did when I was running it on my older Dell Optiplex machine. I have certain external devices (form printer, barcode scanner, etc) that Parallels is set to recognize and automatically claim to work with it and not Mac OS when they are plugged in or turned on. I also use Parallels to run UPS Worldship, Microsoft Project, Dev C++, and some Powerpoint utilities. While it is certainly not perfect, it’s pretty darn close for my dollar, and it is by far the best option I have tried and I like it a lot better than having to boot up in one of the other using bootcamp.

Matt

[Rich Rubasch]

Big vote for Parallels here too. Feels like Windows, behaves like Windows but is just a click away!

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Steve Martin]

Ditto on Parallels. Our production company has 5 simultaneous QuickBooks users. The data resides on a windows machine, but 3 of us access the data files from our mac over the network without a flaw. It’s nice to not have to re-boot into Windows.

Production is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!

[Chris Newlin]

I appreciate your posts, folks.
May be ordering Parallels pretty quickly.

thanks again,
bubba

EclecticBubba

[Ben Crosbie]

I use VMware Fusion on my Mac Pro to run Quickbooks in Windows. I’ve never used parallels but they do the same thing. I just got Fusion because at the time I got a crazy good deal on it ($20 I believe). So either way you can’t go wrong, and Quickbooks works great.

http://www.eidolonfilms.com

[Ruth Schadler]

Did you change from bootcamp to parallel? If so, did it do what you expected or at least hoped for?

[Walter Biscardi]

We tried bootcamp and Parallels in the past and weren’t happy with it so we actually have a cheap Windows PC to run Quickbooks for our shop. In particular, burning a CD for our accountant or even a flash drive for tax season, they were never able to read them, even if we were in Windows mode on our Macs. We don’t have that issue with our PC.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” featuring Sigourney Weaver coming soon.

Blog Twitter Facebook

[Chris Newlin]

to respond to “what did you eventually do?”…
a month or so after this original post, I installed “Parallels” and it has run well ever since. I had been using an older PC in the past, but was finding that I often needed to access QB/QK both at the office OR at home… so I didn’t want to keep running two systems just for book keeping.
Parallels seems to work as advertised. I have had one or two programs on the Windows side monopolize the CD writer, but I can just slide the file I need to burn over to the other OS. (and this could easily be a pilot error, I did not spend a lot of time setting the program up, it was just pretty easy to get up and running.)
It boots and powers up nicely, and again, I have not even explored the various ways that I could be using it better.
I am also a version behind, so any hitches that I may have encountered might be solved by now.
very happy with it, and very happy to keep all book keeping, invoicing ability, and banking functions on a MacBook, with the original PC QB/QK software.

bubba

EclecticBubba