Simple Windows Use on My iMac

[coopermon1]

I have a 21.5' iMac running an i5 at 2.5 GHz with 4 GB Ram that i recently purchased. So I want to do some simple things with Windows, essentially MS Office (Excel, Word, and Access only) for work. No games, graphics, or anything requiring muscle.

At work I use Windows XP Pro. So Here's what I want to know:

*Windows XP or Windows 7 (32 bit 0r 64 bit)?
*I would like to run Windows virtual, so Parallels or Fusion, remembering I interested in ease of use over power use.
*I use Office 2007 at work, any reason not to buy Office 2010. Is it compatible with XP?
*4 GB Ram enough for this task? I'm on a budget.


Thanks to all!

 

[Kaveman]

You can buy Office for the Mac, the only thing its missing is Access. Thats a very specialised need.

Pages and Numbers both export as MS, and TextEdit saves as Word.
No need for Windows there.

1. Suit yourself, it comes with all the same problems and concerns as Windows, on any other hardware.

2. Parallels works better IMO.

3. Just what ever version of Access you need.

4. Only Just, OS X likes 2 Gig, Windows likes more, 8 GB is ideal.

I know lots of people who go through all this and it all just sits there taking up a good chunk of Hard-drive space, they just never use it.

 

[karazelle]

An i5 with 4Gb of RAM should do whant you want to do just fine.

I personally prefer vmware fusion, my fellow poster prefers Parallels. I own both, came out in favour of fusion, but both are very good.

I see no reason not to get Office 2010. It's like Office 2007 (which wasn't bad) done "right". Same with Windows 7, and Win7+Office2010 = yay!

I recommend running virtual 32bit Windows 7 or XP with 32bit Office 2010. You mentioned doing simple after all.

A lot of people ask about 32bit vs 64bit and the quick summary is:
Windows:
If you want to give the virtual machine itself 4Gb RAM or more (you said you only have 4Gb, and of that your Mac eats some) then you want 64bit Windows 7. If not, go with 32 bit, its less demanding of the system and will do everything you like.

Office:
If you regularly work with individual Office files that approach sizes of a gigabyte PER DOCUMENT, or you start maxing out the million rows and coloumns in Excel on doing live analysis or you regularly use PowerPivot to access multimillion row databases for pivot tables in Excel, then yes - do look at 64bit Office 2010, but remember that all Office addons and plugins ALSO need to be 64bit to work.
If none of this feels applicable to you, then go with 32bit Office.
32bit Word can handle the entire text of the old and new testament plus the Quaran + the Buddhist texts...

I would create a virtual machine with 1,2Gb RAM and Windows 7 32bit (or XP, XP is even less demanding, but an i5 can easily handle Win7 virtually), install the Office version of your choice within and see how it actually performs.
If it feels a bit slow or slugish, up to 1,5, then slowly increment .1 until you feel its fine if needed.

Even virtual machines should have antivirus. Microsoft Security Essentials does the job perfectly and is free.