Another Mac/Windows Question…
1 August 2007 13:29:41
My previous post regarding running Mac OS inside Virtual PC got some great comments. Thanks to everyone for their input. It would appear I’m stuck switching between Mac OS and XP only by shutting down and restarting–the way Apple’s Boot Camp set me up originally. At least Apple is now offering Safari for Windows. By being able to run Virtual PC with IE6, IE7, Mozilla Firefox and Safari all in XP natively, I’m able to do a vast majority of the cross-browser testing I need to.
However, I have another Windows-XP-on-Mac-Hardware annoyance: Opening and closing the optical disc drive. There is no eject button on the beautiful Mac Pro case. In OS X, this isn’t a problem because there is an eject key on the Mac keyboard and a function-key combo in place of the physical eject button. In Windows, I’m using a wireless keyboard and mouse from Dell. There is no eject key on this keyboard, and the standard Mac function-key combo doesn’t work in XP.
Anyone know of a Windows XP command/script/function that I can attach to a function-key combination that will open the drive? As it is I have to do the following: Open My Computer, right click on the drive I want to open and select “Eject.” It’s not terribly hard, but a function key would make it so much easier.
17 September 2007 21:52:59
Hello Dave,
It has been so long since I’ve worked on Windows and I don’t even have one available for reference, but I believe that you can open the CD drive by right clicking on the drive’s icon in My Computer and selecting the eject menu option.
Also, if you haven’t already, check out VMware’s new product for the Mac called VMware fusion. It might be just what you are looking for.
your friend,
Matthew
18 September 2007 9:21:39
Hey Matt,
For the eject key, your response is what I currently do (see the last paragraph of the post). I’m hoping for a quicker method.
As for VMware, any verison of VM for Mac would work great if I wanted to run XP inside the Mac. I don’t have a desire to do that. All of my licensed software is for XP, I communicate in XP (Outlook) and I just plain like XP. It is Mac that I would like to run inside a VM as I only switch to Mac for simple testing and file transfers. To date, I haven’t found a way to do that.
DaveE