It’s been almost 5 months since I brought a black MacBook to work.  At first I thought it was not such a good idea due to the incompatibilities I could face.  So far the experience has not been a bad one, and I can run most of the software I need without having to strive against slow performance or incompatibilities.  With the exception of screwing up some of Jose’s powerpoint slide animations, I don’t think there has been mayor damage done.

The following compromises a list of the software that any individual looking for to work in a Windows environment should have on their list:

Parallels: If you must run Windows on OS X, then you need Parallels.  It’s performance is superb and it will allow you to run a Virtualialzied Windows with a little performance hit.  This blog I am writing as of now is under BlogJet using a copy of WindowsXP.  I also run Office 2007, Firefox, Messenger, Project, and Visual Source Safe (watch out Parallels, someone is lurking in the dark)

Crossover: it allows you to run Windows binaries without having to run Windows.  It is based on the Wine project and so far I have been able to run Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 6 without having to run Windows.  Still on early beta stages but nonetheless quite impressive.

TSClient: I mentioned this on an earlier post.  It has become my default RDC client, extremely fast.

NeoOffice: a port of OpenOffice but does not require x11 on your system.  It runs faster than Microsoft Office for Mac on my MacBook.  Until there is a universal binary for Office, I am using this one for Office productivity.

And finally, if all else fails (as is the case of running VTune on a VM), I can always boot into Windows natively using BootCamp.   Fortunately, thanks to the great programs above, this is something that is happening less often every time.