iMac and Design Shop 2006

[Meezer City]

Is anyone using an iMac dual system computer with Design Shop 2006?

I am in the market for a new computer and the iMac has caught my eye. The Amaya XT OS will remain on its very own PC laptop so that isn't an issue.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[BarbaraB]

Marilou,
I have an iMac Core Duo and am able to use Design Shop Pro +. I had to install Parallels and then Windows XP to set up a virtual PC which will run on my iMac. So far (admittedly I've only been using it a few weeks) it works great. The only confusing step is that each time you open Design Shop you have to activate the USB with the dongle by right clicking on the USB icon at the bottom right of the Parallels window and clicking the USB you are using. The neat thing about using Parallels instead of Boot Camp is that you can drag files from your mac to the pc and vice versa.

Hope your experience goes as well as mine has... And I love my iMac.

Barbara B

[signman]

Oh I am so jealous Barbara! Can you keep us informed on how well it works out? I have an old PC for the Amaya and Design shop pro, but I have an IntelChip mini mac and the original MiniMac...bought them a month apart.
I doubt if either one would run like a Duo, but since all my artwork is done on a Mac I'd buy another in a flash if I could run DS pro on it! So keep posting updates on how well you are doing!
Do you run the Amaya off it also, or keep that on a PC?

[Meezer City]

Barbara thank you so much for your reply. I still have not purchased anything yet. I am hoping to hold out until the end of the year. ANy information you discover along the way would be most appreciated.

I really think this is the direction I will go.

[levelbest]

Just realize that if you do go this route, it's not officially supported - so getting help from melco on the computer/software side of things is going to be difficult at best...

[BarbaraB]

We have a PC laptop that runs the 2 XT machines and it has Design Shop loaded on it as well. My husband has a PC that also has both software packages on it. We have a wireless network since we have the work space on the second floor. (I'm on the first floor.) As we've just begun our embroidery venture I'll be able to keep you posted as we go along. So far so good right now. I'm going through the training videos and hope to get our official training in the next few weeks. I'll let you all know if we run into software issues. I'm not expecting anything dramatic as DS is the only big program I'm running on the Parallels/XP partition. Thanks, John, for the reminder that it is not officially supported. That is something to keep in mind.

[Meezer City]

Hello Barbara. I'm just checking in a few months down the road to see if you are still thrilled with the iMac. My plan remains waiting until the new OS gets released and looks pretty bug free.

I did have a meltdown of sorts. I turned over a can of Coke on my laptop. So now I am limping along using the PC that runs the Amaya OS to do other things. Which means I'm not running the machine at this moment.

[KNC Designs]

Hey there Marilou,
We had trouble doing anything else with our p.c. until I went in to settings and turned off the "bindings". This solved a whole bunch of problems we can now use our computer how we see fit and it does not matter if the Amaya is running or not. Our instructor covered this after we brought up some problems we were having during our training in Denver.

Curtis

[Meezer City]

Thanks! Maybe I need to call up there and see what "bindings" are and how to turn them off. I have not had problems because I have not tried to do 2 things at once. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[KNC Designs]

Marilou,
The bindings settings are under your network settings.You must be logged in as the administrator to access these settings.Go to Windows help and it can give you much better instructions than I can. And maybe Mon. call tech for Melco.

Curtis

[Meezer City]

Do you think I should try to do other things when the machine is runing to see if I have problems before fiddling with the bindings setting? I have never tried to do anything else.

[KNC Designs]

Yes I would try some tests on some scraps and see how other programs affect the machine before I made any changes.We were getting constant changes in the live graph window for the actifeed settings while the machine was sewing, resetting back to the beginning of the design etc. Once we changed our settings all of these issues were resolved.

Curtis

[Olivekid]

Hi Meezer City,
I run Designshop Pro on an imac. I use bootcamp (which is free from Apple). You could use Parallels or Fusion if you wanted to run Windows alongside Mac.
Generally I have had no problems other than the quirkiness of Windows (I have 22 Macs).
I've had absolutely no problems with it. Of course I wish Amaya would port the software to Mac so I could rid myself of Windows, but it ain't going to happen.
Good luck!

[Meezer City]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm sitting tight until the new OS is released.

[Margie & Jay]

Hello Everyone,

So we have a full [late this week with our new XT. It just arrived the other day and we are working out a few niggles. Of course we love our Apple computers as well.

I just tried to run windows XP using Fusion but for some reason the OS system would not recognize the machine during the configuration process. We have the yellow crossover cable. I assumed there was a problem with the way fusion recognizes the ethernet port. It was a free trial anyhow. So now I am giving Parallels a shot.

If anyone has any advice regarding what I might be missing? I would love to hear about it. If only the textile industry had embraced Apple's flavor of UNIX.

Thanks again,
Jay