kevin

August 7, 2006

Running XP on Intel Macs – BootCamp, Parallels or Wine?

For Mac users who need to run the occasional Windows app, you’ve got a couple of options now. Wine has long been available for Linux users to run some Windows apps on top of a Windows API compatibility layer – CodeWeavers have taken this and produced a commerical version called CrossOver, and CrossOver Mac for Mac OS X, which offers support for running Windows MS Office plus some other apps. It’s not shipping yet, but when it does it will be priced at $59.95 which is a good price if you desperately need MS Office on your Mac.

The other options offer fuller support since they allow you to run Windows directly on your Mac – BootCamp from Apple allows you to dual boot your Intel based Mac to either Mac OS X or XP. The other option which is interesting is Parallels, which is Vitualization software (like VMWare) and allows you to install and run XP as a guest OS ontop of a currently running Intel-based Mac OS X machine.

Reghardware.co.uk have a lengthy article covering both BootCamp and Parallels, and is worth a read if you’re considering these options.

August 7, 2006

Nastel jKool – end to end performance monitoring for Java web apps

Nastel have performance monitoring utility for J2EE applications that instruments and monitors running applications, and reports on code execution time through all the layers of the application.

They have a personal use version available from their site here.

August 4, 2006

Java Looking Glass 3d project demo mistaken for Windows Vista?

Looking Glass 3d is an awesome project to build a next generation 3d desktop environment by Sun and the Java community on the java.net site, and is an excellent demonstration of the graphical capabilities of Java and the Java 3D API.

This week there was a copy of a video of Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, demo’ing Looking Glass posted to YouTube.com, only that the caption for the video reads “Internal Review of Microsoft 3D Vista”.

What is even funnier is the comments posted to the site – “This is freaking awesome! Microsoft Rules!”.

Yes it is freaking awesome, and implemented in Java with no Windows anywhere in sight 🙂

August 4, 2006

Is Windows Vista Ready? Paul Thurrot of winsupersite.com – “No. God, no”

Despite being a fully paid up member of the Church of Microsoft Bashers, I do occaisionally take a peek over the fence to see what is going on in the Microsoft world. This year is of course the year that we’ve been promised the next great thing, as the successor to XP arrives in the form of Windows Vista. However, despite the long delays and 5 elapsed long years since XP was released, it would appear that all is not well with the next replacement of XP (that you are going to have to buy a new PC just to run).

Paul Thurrot of the Windows SuperSite often has some great articles with great insider info about upcoming new Microsoft releases. This month however, it appears that even this guy who appears to stand solidly on the Microsoft side of the fence has some very stong things to say about the current state of Vista. Is Windows Vista ready, you ask? Paul says ‘No. God, no’.

Check out the article here for his opinions on why Vista is not yet even close to being ready to ship this year.