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No luck yet. The word from Xactimate is that it will not work on Mac when I last checked.

Yes -- typing this on a MacBook Pro

At the bottom of my screen, are all my Parallels files, including Xactimate. I also have Explorer open, along with Firefox which I'm using for this forum.

I've been using it for over a year -- the graphics capabilities of the Mac make Xactimate work much better than it ever did on my PC.

Maybe you should do some research, this is a discussion that has been thoroughly covered in the past. Seems to me that JUDG is an expert on the subject.

Ive been running Xact & parrallels on a macbook for about 6 months. I still have a few hiccups, but they are generally the same Xact hiccups that I would have on windows. I run a lot of ram on my mac - 6mb.

I have been running Xact. on my macbook pro for 9 months now flawlessly. I am also running parallels 5 and allocating 1.5 gb of ram to my virtual machine. I am running windows xp home with service pack 3 installed.

When first installed I was running 2 gigs of ram as this is what the macbook came with. I upgraded to 8 gigs of ram, and tried to allocate 4 gigs to virtual machine, and it was real sluggish. I found that the more ram you gave parallels it would run slower.

I do not run any anti virus on my windows side, and do not defragment anything on my windows side. I simply run Xactimate, and Office. I only use clean my mac, and it works great. I am in the process of swapping hard drives, and running a 7200 rpm, and trying to run VMWARE Fusion, as it runs alot better, and faster then parallels.

Just to let you know, ive heard that Xactimate, sometimes takes over your desktop if you are having problems, and if they find out you are running it on a mac with a virtual machine, they will not help you.

 

Rick Doshier

Rick, you reminded me of the other reason why I eventually returned to the purchase of a windows machine.  The first reason was that 80% or more of my work was done on the windows portion of my Mac.

Secondly, the reason you reminded me of was that even though I crammed a buttload of Ram on my mac, I was only able to use/borrow 2mb of it to run Xactimate on Parallels.  Putting these two together, it only made sense for me to just go back to an all inclusive windows machine for half the price of a Mac with equivalent specs.  Im now running Xactimate with 100% of my ram. 

If you surf the net on your windows side, you will need to get antivirus.  Mac does not change anything windows does as it operates independently of Mac and is still a windows OS.  If all of your web browsing is done on the Mac, side then you won't need it.  A slight drawback is that many CMS programs used by IA firms are not compatible with Mac's web browsing softwares, so you will still need to use Windows explorer on the Windows side.

I too have tried VMWare and Parallels, but prefer Parallels.  VMware may work better (I did not notice a big difference bt performance), but VM Ware kept resetting my registration with MSB Integriclaim.  I wouldn't use VMware unless you know beyond any shadow of doubt that you will not need anything other than Xactimate.

I had the same experience with Xactimate regarding help desk issues- the solution is just to keep yo mouth shut.  The good news here is that the Mac will never be the source of the problem.  Your only issues with Xactimate will be with the bugs that Xactimate still hasn't worked out and with the historically glitch-prone Windows.

Posted By General on 09 Jan 2011 05:22 PM
Ive been running Xact & parrallels on a macbook for about 6 months. I still have a few hiccups, but they are generally the same Xact hiccups that I would have on windows. I run a lot of ram on my mac - 6mb.

You hit the nail on the head with that post much more squarely than you may realize.  The important caveat that many do not realize (escaped me for years) is that when you run windows on a mac, windows still behaves like windows.  Mac does not, in any way, change the behavior of Windows and/or the programs you run on it.

It is a well known fact that Mac runs graphics intensive programs much better than Windows.  However, this benefit doesn't affect Xactimate when it is run on Parallels or VM Ware.  The things that change this are having a better graphics card, more ram, better monitor, more speed, etc.

You still need to restart windows while running it on a mac- Windows 7 runs much better than XP and requires less restarting.  Windows 7 has been a wonderful replacement for XP.  As I mentioned in the post above, you still need to have virus software, antispyware, etc.  A lot of the base security functions that come with WIndows 7 do make it a much better OS.  Yet, it's still no comparison to the elite Mac OS.

 Thanks for all the replies. I was getting ready to do some research on this issue. 

Amy (newbie to forum) 

I use an older Macbook from late 2007 to run Xactimate with Boot Camp. It can be a pain to have to log out of OS X and into Windows, but during a CAT event I rarely have time to hang out on the Mac side of the drive. I've been using this machine in this fashion since October of 2007 and so far it has outlasted my other Windows only backup machines. My machine will run using VM software but it is not "snappy" at all.