Hello all. Over the past year my upgrade to Windows 10 has not been a pleasant one. Unfortunately, it has turned my otherwise fine running Dell Workstation (when it was running on Windows 7 Pro) into a glitchy unproductive machine. I talked to a computer guy about it and he advised me that my money would be better spent getting a new machine. It will be 5 years old next year and I guess it will be about time to upgrade anyways. However, this experience with Windows 10 has left a bad taste in my mouth and I don't care much for Microsoft's new sales model (i.e. give you a "free" operating system that is really just a gateway to constantly spy and market to you). So, I am contemplating switching to a Mac with Parallels to handle running the Windows programs that I have to have. I was wondering, is there anyone else here running a similar setup that could relate their experiences?
Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 394235, member: 6939 wrote: Hello all. Over the past year my upgrade to Windows 10 has not been a pleasant one. Unfortunately, it has turned my otherwise fine running Dell Workstation (when it was running on Windows 7 Pro) into a glitchy unproductive machine. I talked to a computer guy about it and he advised me that my money would be better spent getting a new machine. It will be 5 years old next year and I guess it will be about time to upgrade anyways. However, this experience with Windows 10 has left a bad taste in my mouth and I don't care much for Microsoft's new sales model (i.e. give you a "free" operating system that is really just a gateway to constantly spy and market to you). So, I am contemplating switching to a Mac with Parallels to handle running the Windows programs that I have to have. I was wondering, is there anyone else here running a similar setup that could relate their experiences?
Bow Tie:
I run Windows 7 and Windows 10 separately in VM's (Virtual Machines) under Fusion on a MacBook Pro. Opinions vary, but I prefer Fusion over Parallels because Parallels likes to "Unify" the two OS's, mushing them together so that they share desktops etc. Fusion is more "pure"...When I run Windows, I want to just run Windows. I can still access directories on the Mac, but it just seems cleaner to me.
As for guidance: whichever you choose, get a Mac with LOADS of Ram...I have 16 gb, and I split it down the middle...8 for Windows; 8 for the Mac. Cad (various flavors) runs fine...as fast as my Dell Precision workstation at work with a pretty hot Xeon processor. I've never done a ton of 3D point cloud stuff, so that may take more memory.
One thing I like about VM's is that you can take snapshots of the entire environment; if anything blows up on you (in Windows), you can go back and it's like it never happened. Finally, When you suspend the VM, and want to boot up windows again, it takes like 15 seconds, not 3 minutes like most of our desktops running Windows 10 do. I love having both worlds a mouse click away.
So those Mac VMs handle software dongles okay?
Jim Frame, post: 394244, member: 10 wrote: So those Mac VMs handle software dongles okay?
The USB ports show up and act exactly like they should in Windows, including Thumb Drives, SD/smart media readers, USB serial port adaptors etc. Don't know about many dongles, but I would *really, really* love to volunteer trying out a Star*net dongle for a week or two and provide a full report on it's success or failure.:)
I got a new computer at work. It has Windows 10 Enterprise. Let me tell you that is like different vastly better operating system than Windows 10 Home especially an upgrade on a Windows 7 box. I was really afraid it would be bad (we have no choice, I.T. has a replacement schedule) but it has actually been very good. Everything I use has installed and runs fine. It has 64gb RAM and 32gb on the graphics card and a 1tb solid state drive.
My main complaint about my new W10 laptop is it keeps bugging me or "congratulating" me about Office. I don't want or need Office.
You could always give Linux a try on your existing computer, Just partition off a part of the hard drive and give it a go at no cost. It is fairly easy to do.
Dave Karoly, post: 394249, member: 94 wrote: It has 64gb RAM and 32gb on the graphics card and a 1tb solid state drive.
That's a lot of RAM particularly the graphics card. Which do you think makes processing of point clouds easier? My understanding was that once you had 2-4 GB RAM in the graphics card that was more than sufficient.
I'm running Windows 10 on both of the PCs that I do my heavy processing on. I had some glitches with TBC, mainly with V10 data, so I started running it in Windows 7 compatibility mode, and everything's been fine since. Our IT also installed something to make it look more like Windows 7.
To my surprise, I like Windows 10. My experience is that it boots up MUCH faster - seconds instead of minutes - than my Windows 7 machine. I also like some of the graphics, like the progress window when copying large amounts of data. I haven't experienced any of the problems I hear from others; however, these two machines both came with Win 10 installed; I've never tried "upgrading" to it.
The one thing that I definitely don't like about 10 is that you can't turn off automatic updates.
Actually, one can much delay, if not essentially turn off the updates. In the settings, tell the system that you are on a metered wireless connection and updates won't download unless prompted for me anyway.
I saw where I could delay them but it also said you couldn't delay security updates. I'll have to investigate further, thanks for the tip.
Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 394235, member: 6939 wrote: Hello all. Over the past year my upgrade to Windows 10 has not been a pleasant one. Unfortunately, it has turned my otherwise fine running Dell Workstation (when it was running on Windows 7 Pro) into a glitchy unproductive machine. I talked to a computer guy about it and he advised me that my money would be better spent getting a new machine. It will be 5 years old next year and I guess it will be about time to upgrade anyways. However, this experience with Windows 10 has left a bad taste in my mouth and I don't care much for Microsoft's new sales model (i.e. give you a "free" operating system that is really just a gateway to constantly spy and market to you). So, I am contemplating switching to a Mac with Parallels to handle running the Windows programs that I have to have. I was wondering, is there anyone else here running a similar setup that could relate their experiences?
Mr. Tie,
I've been running Mac hardware for 7 years. I tried Boot Camp but my older machine was too slow to deal with re-boots all of the time. Within a few months I tried a VM package that did the trick. I upgraded to a new Mac about 18 months ago with a Fusion drive and 32 GB of ram.
I have run several versions of Softdesk stuff and now Carlson with Intellicad. I have only dealt with one dongle for Spectra Precision software, which was easy to work out. I can't recall anything, program or peripheral for which I could not find a driver or a Windows or Mac solution.
The VM software appears to get a little smoother and more seamless with each yearly update, which are not free. I only have Windows 10 open to run Carlson and some Javad stuff and do virtually everything else in OS10. With the Fusion drive, it only takes Win10 about 12 seconds to boot and I always shut it down when I am done. Keeping Win10 running all of the time can cause problems in my experience. Sharing folders, files and peripherals between OS's is almost seamless.
I still get snickers from colleagues when I bring up an issue I might be having with Carlson. They default to "it must be a Mac thing". As if no-one else in the world has glitches with Carlson when they run a real operating system.
I have been surveying since 1971. I bought my first PC in late 1982. I am no guru and have never built a computer. I bailed out of the Microsoft OS about the time of Win7, after having so many issues with drivers, virus updates and other crap in favor of Mac. While not perfect, OS10 has been more stable than what I had become accustomed to with Widows. My 2 cents. Just replaced Open Office in favor of Microsoft's latest version of Office for Mac and and pleasantly surprised.
I am not a salesman for Apple, Javad, Parallels, Spectra Precision, Microsoft or Softdesk.
JA. PLS SoCal
Totalsurv, post: 394570, member: 8202 wrote: You could always give Linux a try on your existing computer, Just partition off a part of the hard drive and give it a go at no cost. It is fairly easy to do.
I have been doing exactly that for several years. There is a bit of a learning curve (initial installation), but not much.
I tried VM many times. It works, but the cost in computer resources is too great... an otherwise snappy machine becomes laggy and slow.
I have heard that multi booting Windows on Apple hardware works fine too.
Bow Tie Surveyor, post: 394235, member: 6939 wrote: Hello all. Over the past year my upgrade to Windows 10 has not been a pleasant one. Unfortunately, it has turned my otherwise fine running Dell Workstation (when it was running on Windows 7 Pro) into a glitchy unproductive machine. I talked to a computer guy about it and he advised me that my money would be better spent getting a new machine. It will be 5 years old next year and I guess it will be about time to upgrade anyways. However, this experience with Windows 10 has left a bad taste in my mouth and I don't care much for Microsoft's new sales model (i.e. give you a "free" operating system that is really just a gateway to constantly spy and market to you). So, I am contemplating switching to a Mac with Parallels to handle running the Windows programs that I have to have. I was wondering, is there anyone else here running a similar setup that could relate their experiences?
I would bet that old machine would be a great candidate tor Linux of some sort.
Perhaps just wipe the disk and reinstall Windows 7, then install Linux.... (windows bootloaders are weird, best to install W first, then L after)
