Systura Where information becomes knowledge...

I have been using my Macbook Pro for over a week now with my work environment within VirtualBox.  I am getting used to the environment, but still messing up some of the key sequences for copy and paste.  VirtualBox is running ok, it has locked up on me several times, but not enough to make me switch to another virtualization piece of software.

I did find that I made a mistake in talking about the need for OS X to run in 64 bit mode.  Like Windows, to take advantage of memory above 4 Gig, you need to run the operating system in 64 bit mode.  What is very confusing about OS X is that some 64 bit programs will run when running 32 bit mode OS X, because the operating system supports 64 extensions.  It becomes very confusing, because you look at the "Activity Monitor" and processes with "Intel (64 bit)", so it makes you think you are in 64 bit without being in 64 bit.

I finally figured this out when I modified my virtualized work environment to use 3 Gig of RAM and the environment would not start.  I then realized that when my work environment was using 2 Gig of RAM, I was using 75% of my memory, thanks to iStat Menus.  So, I booted to 64 bit mode and even with my work environment at 3 Gig, I am only using 61% of my memory.

Initially, I ran into screen refresh problems running VirtualBox on OS X in 64 bit memory.  I still had those problems initially, but I found out that the screen refresh issue was only a problem when I was running the window for VirtualBox on my secondary monitor.  Since moving the window for VirtualBox to my main screen, the screen refresh issue has gone away for now.

I still may try Parallels for virtualization, but I am going to wait a few more days before beginning that trial.