Running Parallels on a Mac

Brooklyn Bridge · Sep 15, 2012

A question for all you Mac geeks out there. We just purchased an iMac and will need to work on Word Docs, PowerPoint and Excel from time to time. Is it worth it to purchase parallels or does iWork do the job? (I though iWork has Word, Excel and PP already in the program and is cheaper)

All help is appreciated. THX

The Big Ragu · Sep 15, 2012

BB, There is a version of the MS Office suite for OS X. If you are going Mac, that should be your first option. Why not just run Word, Excel and PP right on your Mac within OS X?

If you do want to run Windows (or another operating system) on your iMac, though, you don't need Parallels necessarily, unless you want to be able to boot Windows within OS X.

If you are fine booting one operating system at a time to use whatever programs you want on that OS, you use "Boot Camp," which is built into OS X, to add another operating system, such as Windows. When your iMac is booting, hold down the option key and it will ask you to choose which operating system you want it to boot into. You can choose OS X or Windows (or whatever other operating systems you have sitting on a disk partition).

If you decide you want to be able to open Windows programs from within OS X, Parallels *is* worth it. I run it on several machines.

Precious Roy · Sep 15, 2012

I personally like Open Office for my Office stuff like Word and Excel just because I don't do a lot of work in those programs and usually just need something down and dirty.

Versatile · Sep 15, 2012

Precious Roy said:
I personally like Open Office for my Office stuff like Word and Excel just because I don't do a lot of work in those programs and usually just need something down and dirty.

OpenOffice for the win. I've had fewer problems in my four years with OpenOffice than I had in my six previous years with Microsoft Office. WordPerfect circa 2000 might be my favorite word processor, but I don't know anyone who still uses it (though they're still making new versions).

FileNotFound · Sep 15, 2012

OpenOffice's Excel equivalent can be a bit sketchy sometimes, but in general the suite works very well as an Office alternative.

If you absolutely NEED to run Windows on a Mac for some reason, as I do, may I recommend VMWare Fusion. Incredibly fast, easy to use, allows you to copy files between the two platforms via click-and-drag.

If you don't need Windows for some other reason, though, Office for Mac or OpenOffice should work fine.