Duke Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 Hi all. I need to run Internet Explorer on a Mac for the school because Lloyds TSB are . The best balance of stability and ease-of-use seems to be to virtualise a Windows box with IE on the Mac. Dual-booting takes too long and is inconvenient (this won't be needed regularly), and app virtualisation/WINE seems too unstable (needs to be reliable). As such, what's everyone's preference for OS virtualisation on a Mac? It'll be a 13" Air if that makes any difference. My options seem to be VMware, Parallels and VirtualBox. I'm most comfortable with VMware personally but have heard good things about Parallels. Any suggestions? Thanks, Chris
andy_nic Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 I’ve not tried many but I normal use virtual box for work on windows, never tried it on mac. But have just bought VMware Fusion 3 for my Macbook at home and am quite happy with it and a few of my friends who have mac’s use it. Runs quite well on my Macbook 4GB Ram, 2GHz processor 1
mounters Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 I use VMWare Fusion 3 on my mini at home with no problems, using unity you can place Windows applications in the dock to to make them appear to be native to the user. 1
jamin100 Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 to be honest I dont think it really matters. They will all do what you need and perform adequately. Just use virtual box but only because its free. 1
chris_uk Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 Use virtual Box, it will allow you to run the VM in the background and then RDP to it. I use Virtual Box on my MacBook for web dev. It happly runs in the background so I can use it. You can just use the command, vboxmanage startvm VMNAME --type headless 1
danbuntu Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 +1 for virtualbox. I will run in seamless mode like unity. As free if it doesn't work out you've lost nothing but time and can go on to buy one of the other alternatives 1
mac_shinobi Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 what about safari or chrome or opera with lloyds tsb site ? https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1893522?threadID=1893522
Duke Posted May 10, 2011 Author Posted May 10, 2011 You are all wonderful people, many thanks! what about safari or chrome or opera with lloyds tsb site? It's specifically the LloydsLink Business page which Lloyds Support have confirmed will not work with anything except Internet Explorer. Odd, considering the image they use on that website: Online Services (Support were aware of the irony) Cheers, Chris
north-ict Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 I use virtual box on my macbook running windows xp on it in seamless mode works like a charm. . Not cool though about Lloyds stating that it only works with internet explorer only. More and more people are getting on the Mac side with no idea about virtualisation or how to go about it they should look into changing there stance on that but i guess a lot of people have to kick up a fuss about it to make an impact for any big company to do anything about it. 1
Duke Posted May 10, 2011 Author Posted May 10, 2011 Not cool though about Lloyds stating that it only works with internet explorer only. More and more people are getting on the Mac side with no idea about virtualisation or how to go about it they should look into changing there stance on that but i guess a lot of people have to kick up a fuss about it to make an impact for any big company to do anything about it. To be fair, the person I spoke to in support said she'd raised the issue with the technical team several times, they were aware of it and would look into it, but there was 'no timescale' on a fix, so I assume it's not a high-priority for them. She also said she'd pointed out using a Mac in the banner image wasn't a particularly clever idea and that they were looking at changing that too...
EduTech Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 I use VirtualBox I just have a WindowsXP VM running to test certain things and run Windows Based Apps :-) James.
GrumbleDook Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 Parallels for most things, and VirtualBox for a few images.
nonmonotonic Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 A lot of work for one application. Why not try Crossover? You dont need to install Windows but I suggest a trial first because its not 100% compatible.
danbuntu Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 There is a free version of wine for mac which will let you install IE as well. I can't say I got very far with it but then I'm not a really a mac man
EduTech Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 Question! If you install the IE Tab Add-On for Firefox will that allow the Bank Website to work? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ie-tab/ James.
nonmonotonic Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 Forgot to mention that Crossover is a commercial version of Wine.
Duke Posted May 12, 2011 Author Posted May 12, 2011 From what I could see online, Wine and App virtualisation worked fairly well in some cases, but it was a bit hit-and-miss. I need to make this as stable as possible, the person it's for would not be happy if it crashed while they were sorting out a big financial transaction! Question! If you install the IE Tab Add-On for Firefox will that allow the Bank Website to work? Requirement: Microsoft Windows + Internet Explorer > 4.0 Looks like this add-on is Windows-only as it requires IE to actually be installed on the machine and FF just calls components of it.
clareq Posted May 12, 2011 Posted May 12, 2011 Is this any good for you: IE Mac OS X | Test Websites in Internet Explorer on Mac OSX
Carter Posted May 12, 2011 Posted May 12, 2011 I've used Parallels, VMWarer & Virtual Box & if all you want to use is just for IE I would jsut stick to VirtaulBox. It's a great product for being free!! 1
Duke Posted May 13, 2011 Author Posted May 13, 2011 Is this any good for you: IE Mac OS X | Test Websites in Internet Explorer on Mac OSX Looks like a nice idea but I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be typing my online banking details into a PC controlled by someone else running on their servers. Good idea for testing though, I always liked Browsershots for testing sites if you didn't need it to be interactive.
HodgeHi Posted May 13, 2011 Posted May 13, 2011 If it's just IE then it doesn't matter really. Although I would still choose VirtualBox myself. Also VirtualBox was the only VM manager that supported PXE booting at one point. This was the main point for myself. If you could use this feature it may be a deal-breaker for the other alternatives if they don't support it. 1
Arthur Posted May 13, 2011 Posted May 13, 2011 There is a free version of wine for mac which will let you install IE as well. I can't say I got very far with it but then I'm not a really a mac man WineBottler makes the process much easier. http://mac.appstorm.net/how-to/virtualization/run-windows-apps-on-your-mac-free-with-wine-bottler/ http://lifehacker.com/5440703/winebottler-turns-windows-programs-into-standalone-os-x-applications 1
Dos_Box Posted May 13, 2011 Posted May 13, 2011 I use Firefox to access Lloyds online business banking without any issues at all.
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