Running SIMS.NET on an Intel Mac using Parallels? Possible?

Hi guys,

Interested question.

I have a head teacher at a school I visit that is an Apple Ethusiast and loves his Macs and technology (rare I know! :P ).

He needs a new office PC and we were wondering if he could use a Mac? Most of the software he uses is available in a Mac version anyway (Office, FirstClass etc) apart from SIMS.

What I was wondering is if anyone had successfully installed SIMS.NET on Windows XP while running inside OSX using Parallels? It would need to be able to talk to the main SIMS computer used by the school administrator in the office. This is a small peer to peer network.

I think it should work without issue since Windows XP won't know its running on a Mac.

Printing might be an issue since the NRG332 Photocopier/printer doesn't have OSX drivers, but I can try and work a way way round that by setting it up as a shared printer from the school administrator's PC and then using Samba to print to it.

Any advice or should we just keep things simple and buy a PC? If anyone can confirm that SIMS.NET runs under Parallel properly, then what hardware spec would you recommend in terms of RAM and CPU speed? I was thinking 2GB Ram minimum to get decent performance.

I'd rather not use bootcamp, since parellels makes it easy to access Windows XP without having to reboot.

Many Thanks,
CM786 :D

I don't see why it wouldn't work. It certainly works under VMWare on Linux. :)

Thanks Geoff :)

Has anyone actually tried it? :?:

I can just imagine ringing Capita up and saying that we have a problem with SIMS, but its running on a Mac using virtualisation software...... LOL

kingswood ( aka Paul ) did this some time ago and as far as Im aware it worked fine.

I use it this way and it works fine. If you are going to be using Assessment Manager a lot then I would not advise it as the memory use is nasty ... very nasty.

GrumbleDook - is that AM6 or AM7?

I have had it working with both actually, but presently on AM7. I tend not to use it that much as the images I have for the various OSes I also use run of external devices, but it does work and I have spent up to 12 hours using it at a time (no other applications and yes, it did slow to a crawl in the end!)

Thanks for the info. I'll see if we can track the leak. I assume that the Apple software is innocent?

With respect to our Service Desk - they should always try to replicate the error irrespective of the platform. We do only test on MS and we rely on other manufacturers getting their software right.

The leak is the same one that happens on Windows XP and 2000. It is the failure to release all of the memory when swapping marksheets.

It is just AM6/7 ... we are used to it by now.

Why are sotware companies still only writing thier applications for one platform? I understand the time to port but a Library solution that we purchased (which wasn't bad in cost at all) runs on all platforms and can run through web browsers to search on client machines.

In this day and age where the trend is schools are opting for open-source platforms or other alternatives (OS independent, Apple etc) to Windows, schools don't want to be tied down to one OS due to their most important application not being flexible.

Supporting two platforms properly doubles test costs. In our case that would mean going from 30 testers to 60 - not cheap.

What about a web based interface then. That's about as platform independent as you can get.

We do have a web front end for teachers, parents and pupils but at the moment we can't achieve the same richness of interface as with a client application. If we could we would go browser.

Java and/or AJAX can do the 'richness' for you.

I'm not a programmer any more but I do have a good team - they tell me its getting closer but isn't there yet. Even if it was getting the whole of SIMS converted would cost many many millions.