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glideslope · Mar 25, 2010, 11:56 AM

My son will be attending The State University of NY at Buffalo in a few months. Their system will not allow Safari for him to interact with it. They require Internet Explorer for any logged in transactions. Any way around this on the OSX side?

Also would it be better to use a program like Parallels for his Win 7 install versus Boot Camp? He is not a big Windows gamer. My understanding is gaming in Windows does not work with Parallels?

Lastly, when you have Win 7 installed on your MacBook Pro will Time Machine do backups to the external HD for both systems? Or does he need 2 external HD's for backup while in each OS?

Thank you.

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2010, 12:17 PM

IDK why colleges are so retarded with Safari. In reality, it will probably work fine. If not, you can try Firefox. Another alternative would be to enable Safari's Develop menu (Safari>Preferences>Advanced>Show Develop Menu in Menu Bar). Then you can do Develop>User Agent>Internet Explorer 8.0. That can fool sites into thinking that you're running IE (or the other browsers listed).

If that works, then there is no reason to use Parallels or VMware Fusion. Nowadays you can do some light gaming via either, but Bootcamp is the better way to go if you want to game. If you're forced to use one of these apps, you can install Windows 7 with Bootcamp, and then the app can boot off of the Bootcamp partition. And if he wants to play a game, he can restart his MBP in Bootcamp for full performance.

Time Machine will only back up for the OS X partition. But you don't need two external HDs to backup each, whatever free space is left on the external can be used for anything.

Big Mac · Mar 25, 2010, 12:22 PM

I concur with imitchell.

glideslope · Mar 25, 2010, 12:33 PM

Thank you

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2010, 12:35 PM

Not a problem. Let us know what solution works; this is a pretty common issue with colleges and Macs.

Thorzdad · Mar 25, 2010, 01:52 PM

Originally Posted by imitchellg5

Not a problem. Let us know what solution works; this is a pretty common issue with colleges and Macs.

When we were shopping for schools for our daughter last year, we actually found the situation to be the exact opposite. We didn't find a single school that didn't welcome Macs on their network. I'm amazed that, in 2010, a state school doesn't allow Macs on its network.

Have you visited the campus? I bet if you looked around, you'd see a lot of students toting MacBooks. I would suggest contacting the school's IT department directly (phone them!) and ask them about Macs on their network. Quite often, there's a big discrepancy between reality and the information sent to you in mailings or on the website. The school our daughter ended up attending had very outdated information on their website concerning Macs. Contacting IT directly cleared everything up.

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2010, 01:55 PM

Hmm. My school really hates them (but they receive funding from HP). This winter semester they finally allowed Leopard and SL Macs on their network but you have to install bloatware which forced me to reinstall SL...

Thorzdad · Mar 25, 2010, 02:11 PM

Really? What sort of school is it? While all the schools we looked at allowed Macs, the only one that was going to make us jump through hoops was, surprise surprise, a technology university. But, they also gave students their own Windows laptop, so there wasn't going to be a problem, regardless.

olePigeon · Mar 25, 2010, 03:05 PM

Their antiquated system may rely on ActiveX controls, which is why they may require Internet Explorer.

You can try the User Agent options listed above and see if it works. Otherwise, I'd recommend VMWare.

I'm uncertain if Time Machine will back up your Windows partition as well as your Mac. Maybe someone here can clarify.

Big Mac · Mar 25, 2010, 04:00 PM

I am pretty certain Time Machine wouldn't backup the contents of an NTFS (Windows) drive, but I could be wrong.

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2010, 04:00 PM

I already answered that... it will only backup the partition that OS X is installed at.

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2010, 04:02 PM

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

Really? What sort of school is it? While all the schools we looked at allowed Macs, the only one that was going to make us jump through hoops was, surprise surprise, a technology university. But, they also gave students their own Windows laptop, so there wasn't going to be a problem, regardless.

It's the University of Colorado.

macaddict0001 · Mar 25, 2010, 04:13 PM

I'm not all that familiar with parallels or vmware, but virtual pc back in the day stored the windows os a disc image on the same partition. hence in that case it would be backed up with all other user data. So YMMV.

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2010, 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by macaddict0001

I'm not all that familiar with parallels or vmware, but virtual pc back in the day stored the windows os a disc image on the same partition. hence in that case it would be backed up with all other user data. So YMMV.

You have to partition your HD to install Windows for use with anything that isn't emulation.

macaddict0001 · Mar 25, 2010, 05:17 PM

I guess that makes sense seeing as windows won't recognize HFS+

imitchellg5 · Mar 25, 2010, 05:22 PM

Right. And since you don't have to emulate a x86 processor anymore...

Oisín · Mar 25, 2010, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

When we were shopping for schools for our daughter last year, we actually found the situation to be the exact opposite.

I first read this post as being by andi*pandi and was quite flabbergasted with the extremes parents must apparently now go to to get their children into decent schools.

Cold Warrior · Mar 25, 2010, 06:16 PM

You could try IE through CrossOver Mac or darwine (or whatever is the current incarnation of the project). I've had success on at least one banking site that would not respond to a user agent change.

glideslope · Mar 25, 2010, 07:47 PM

Originally Posted by imitchellg5

Not a problem. Let us know what solution works; this is a pretty common issue with colleges and Macs.

WOW, thanks to all for the support. Develop>User Agent>Internet Explorer 8.0. did the trick. Works like a charm. Thanks again to all.

Googer-Giger · Mar 25, 2010, 08:15 PM

My SUNY college hate macs, and say Safari isn't supported with anything that interacts with the servers, and it works fine.

ghporter · Mar 25, 2010, 08:36 PM

Watch out for ActiveX tricks on those school web pages. They may be used for class registration, paying fees, etc. It's a royal pain, but if that's the stuff the school uses, your son may be stuck having to use a school machine for some tasks. Which should not be a major problem; at both of the universities I attended here in San Antonio (UTSA and the UT Health Science Center) there were plenty of school computers, especially after hours when most students become very scarce.

Spheric Harlot · Mar 26, 2010, 05:10 AM

The issue has been fixed (probably), but I wanted to add to this:

Originally Posted by imitchellg5

You have to partition your HD to install Windows for use with anything that isn't emulation.

Parallels and VMWare aren't emulation; they're virtualization.

Hardly anything actually *requires* booting directly into Windows anymore, so virtualization is an effective solution for almost everything except heavy gaming and audio/video production.

If you use either virtualization software, the default is to install the guest operating system onto a disk image, which IS backed up by Time Machine.

Unfortunately, it is backed up AGAIN every single time you run Parallels, resulting in a 7GB file being added to the backup every time. For this reason, Parallels directly presents you with the option of not backing up the Virtual Machine via Time Machine.

I would set up Windows in the VM as necessary, then make a duplicate of that fully set-up disk image, and exclude the original from Time Machine.

imitchellg5 · Mar 26, 2010, 10:32 AM

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

Parallels and VMWare aren't emulation; they're virtualization.

Hardly anything actually *requires* booting directly into Windows anymore, so virtualization is an effective solution for almost everything except heavy gaming and audio/video production.

If you use either virtualization software, the default is to install the guest operating system onto a disk image, which IS backed up by Time Machine.

Unfortunately, it is backed up AGAIN every single time you run Parallels, resulting in a 7GB file being added to the backup every time. For this reason, Parallels directly presents you with the option of not backing up the Virtual Machine via Time Machine.

I would set up Windows in the VM as necessary, then make a duplicate of that fully set-up disk image, and exclude the original from Time Machine.

I know. I was referring to Virtual PC, which is emulation.

That's odd, when I installed VMware I was never given an option to install the OS onto a disk image on my OS X partition. I guess maybe it wasn't an option at the time.

ibook_steve · Mar 26, 2010, 02:29 PM

This really is not a MBP hardware topic, so I'm moving it to Alternative Operating Systems.

Steve

Spheric Harlot · Mar 26, 2010, 03:27 PM

Originally Posted by imitchellg5

I know. I was referring to Virtual PC, which is emulation.

That's odd, when I installed VMware I was never given an option to install the OS onto a disk image on my OS X partition. I guess maybe it wasn't an option at the time.

I admit that I've only used Parallels, which installs into a disk image (.pvm file) by default.

I assumed VMWare would be the same.

Laminar · Mar 26, 2010, 03:46 PM

Originally Posted by Thorzdad

Really? What sort of school is it? While all the schools we looked at allowed Macs, the only one that was going to make us jump through hoops was, surprise surprise, a technology university. But, they also gave students their own Windows laptop, so there wasn't going to be a problem, regardless.

The first day I moved in to my dorm at college, the IT guy was telling me that it was going to take about an hour to get my computer set up and ready to go. As he walked in and saw that it was a Mac he said, "Nevermind, give me three minutes."