My dad wants a Mac Mini for doing regular stuff, such as surfing the web, because his PC is so slow. He has lots of MS software and Quicken on his PC, and he doesn't want to re-buy all of them. Could he switch his Windows CPU and his Mac Mini easily, so he can easily get to all of his software??
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Mac Mini Plus Windows CPU
- Thread starter soccersquirt82
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You can migrate your Windows installation into a virtual machine using the tools that Parallels or VMWare Fusion provide.
Would it save all of his settings, documents, software, etc. on it? Would it be easiest to let the Apple Store take care of it??
Both Parallels and VMWare provide automated tools to migrate a real desktop to a virtual machine for continued use of the old operating system and software.
VMware has a nice free tool that will create an "image" from a working PC. You run the tool on your PC and it make s aVMware "virtual machine file" og your PC that is an exact snapshot. This make it easy but there is something to be said about a "clean install" too. I think you can best results if you start with a fresh windows install but that VMware utility is about as simple as it gets if that is what you want
One thing to remember. He'll need to max out the RAM if he will be using VMware. and also don't buy a Mac if you really only want to run Windows. The point of using VMware is so you can continue to run those few Windows apps whiole you transition to Mac OS X. If you are not going to make the transition you are best staying with the PC.