Operating Visio on MBP

Why not go the easy way and get Parallels or use Boot Camp with Windows 7? 🙂

Does Microsoft Visio work on MACs?: Apple Support Communities

ToMo75 wrote:

So I will have to install Parallels, then install Windows 7 and then install Visio to make it work. That sounds like a solution. Does anyone have experience with this?

Running Windows in a virtual machine is a very common solution for Windows only apps. While I only do limited work with Visio, I have several Access databases and Crystal Reports I need to use (and of course, no Mac versions of either,) and I run those in a VMware Fusion virtual machine. (Basically the same as Parallels.) No need to have to reboot to Boot Camp. 🙂

...want to use my 2006 MacBook Pro...

Where you may run into problems with virtualization is that you need "double the RAM." Meaning you need enough RAM to run Windows simultaneously with OSX. With Windows 7, you'll want to allocate 2GB of RAM, which means you want a Mac with 4GB of RAM so that the Mac doesn't run out of memory. I don't know what the specs are of your MBP but if yours maxes out at 2GB, then you'll probably have to limit the Windows virtual machine to 1GB of RAM, which may be too little to run Visio effectively if you have large files. In that case, you may be better off with using Boot Camp to install Windows, which then would provide all your RAM to Windows.

Reportedly some versions of Visio will run under WINE (a sort of Windows emulator) without Windows. If you want to pursue that possibility, look into Mac applications called "WineSkin" and "CrossOver Mac."

Open Microsoft Remote Desktop app.

Sign-in using your Office 365 password and acces Visio as a remote session via Azure Apps. It is really easy and works like a dream and costs pennies after the initial free trial.

Enjoy

Miles