Hello - We just joined the Tessitura Network and I have a question regarding the use of Macs vs. PCs with Tessitura. We are about to replace all of our desk top units and we are considering replacing our PCs with the Mac Mini. I understand the we will need to purchase and install the Windows parallel software and we will be using Tessitura v.11.
Does anyone have a point of view or a suggestion before we make this purchase. We will be purchasing about 12 new desktops in the next two weeks.
Thank you - David
Hi David –
I guess my question would be, is there a specific reason why you’d go with the Macs over PC’s? Is there another business-critical software that is Mac native? While in theory Tessitura works great on Parallels or some other Virtual Machine software running on a Mac, in practice I’ve found it to be a less than ideal situation. We are a primarily Windows shop for that very reason; the few Mac users that I have tend to just run Tess by way of a terminal services connection because running the virtual machine slows down the workstation too much. Getting BOCAs connected can also sometimes be a challenge.
-p.
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David, as an upcoming RAMP client you can certainly purchase Macintosh computers as long as they support a PC emulation as you indicated to ensure connectivity to hosted environment. So I think the more important question is what will best suit your internal business practices and is it worth purchasing PC emulation software or investing in a standard windows based computer for current use as well as future.
Would be very interested to know how to get BOCAs working on a MAC. We have been trying with one of our consortium partners and Terminal services and we are pretty stuck on how to get it to work!
At a previous position I had an iMac with a virtual machine running Windows Vista. My BOCA was connected to one of those serial->USB adapter jobbers, then I used the virtual machine software (Oracle Virtualbox) to map the connection into the Windows Environment. Told Windows to treat it like a serial port and it worked like a charm. Sorta. Until I rebooted my machine, then had to do it all over again.
Getting that to work in Terminal Services would be a whole separate question, I’d think…
I'd definitely recommend a pilot install of 1 Mac running Parallels/Fusion/Remote Desktop Client before getting all 12, if you haven't done so already. While possible to run Tess in a virtual machine locally, I've run into issues, primarily with printing. You may also run into PCI-DSS issues if you go with desktop virtualization, as the host Mac OS may now be in scope as well as the virtual environment.
The best recommendation I can offer would be to use separate Windows queues for the printers instead of relying on the virtualization layer to take care of that for you. I've had great success using RDC on the Mac to our Terminal Server and then printing to our Windows queues, but that only uses the Mac as a dumb client.
Hi all,
If you connect the BOCA printers to the network via Ethernet (assuming you have that option installed) rather than locally via USB, then Windows emulation on the Mac can talk to them via the network in the same way a physical Windows client would. I think that approach would be more reliable and less troublesome overall than messing with USB emulation or some other similar approach.
_______________________________________________________ David Frederick Database Applications Analyst Segerstrom Center for the Arts 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 T (714) 556-2122 x 4067 E DFrederick@SCFTA.org