Be Excellent To Each Other

Okay, Sam has a windows laptop, he needs to be able to run Logic Pro 9 which is Mac based.

We can't get the OSX to boot at all it just crashes, any suggestions?

Laptop spec;
Acer Aspire 5552 - P323G32Mnkk
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 processor P320 (2.1 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache)
Chipset: AMDRS880M
Screen: 15.6" HD Acer CineCrystal LCD
Graphics: UMA
Graphics Memory: N
RAM: 3 GB RAM
HDD: 320 GB (5400 Rpm)
Optical Drive: DVD-Super Multi DL drive

Any help really appreciated, I don't have a budget to get him a Mac and this would really help him.

You need specific processors (and graphics cards I think) to trick it into running. I can ask my mate at work once I'm back as he built a Hackintosh recently. He'll know where to look for advice at the very least.

Thank you Z, any advice/pointing in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

You've looked on Hackintosh.com already, right?

Yes it's pretty specific, you'll be lucky if it just runs on hardware you happen to have. I bought one particular netbook and changed the wifi card to get it all working.
A fair bit of reading up is needed, hackintosh.com probably a good place to start (sorry).

Unlikely to be possible on amd hardware. Sorry! Might work in vmware, maybe

My mate has it virtual on his Hp laptop.

The hardware needs to closely match what Apple use otherwise the OSX hardware drivers won't work. Ideally you should have purchased the hardware with a Hackintosh in mind. The site below details what is needed.

http://www.hackintosh.com

Not for the faint hearted.

Jesus, how many more people have me on ignore?

The killer with Logic will be if you need to interface it with external devices. Running in a VM may introduce interfacing issues such as devices not functioning or latency issues.

One of the reasons musicians flocked to the Mac was they could easily use Firewire devices instead of USB on the PC which had latency issues.

The best thing to do at this point would be to go onto a Logic forum and ask. Because frankly none of us lot know if you would be wasting your time with a VM or not. You may get it working but find it's basically unusable.

I'm surprised Zardoz hasn't answered this thread? I thought he knew about this stuff?

He should know by now that unless he says the magic words:

"Zardoz speaks to you, his chosen ones......." we just ignore him.

Thanks guys, you've pretty much confirmed what we thought. Unfortunately when we bought the laptop, we weren't aware that he was going to need to use Mac software as he was using windows stuff at the time.

He would be using it to record stuff as well as play about with it, so latency could be an issue, looks like we need to go down the 'how to get an affordable mac' route.

Might try and get him one for his 18th, but all serious suggestions on the best place to look/best type to buy will be gratefully received, I'm way out of my depth on this one. Anyone know what sort of budget I might need? *cries*

If it helps the Apple site has ten months interest free credit on stuff right now.

For what it's worth, I've used usb stuff with no latency issues at all, so long as I went with suitable ASIO drivers.

Maybe a second hand Mac mini (intel processor rather than the older G4) might fit the bill. That way you can use your own monitor/mouse/keyboard to keep cost down further.

Look on the Apple site for refurbs as mentioned above.

I hope this message gets through.

And he wonders why everyone has him on ignore.

Have you tried VMWare?

I suspect there may be latency or compatibility issues when doing that.

Not on My mates who runs it fine.

Does anyone have a mate who runs it fine on WMWare?

I can ask.

Heh, we're going to try some of the PC based suggestions first, then if they don't work plan b will be a macbook of some description.

Thanks for the help guys, I'll let you know how we get on with it. (and no doubt be asking further questions)

Also you might be able to get some sort of student/educational discount.

Edit: And don't forget cashback from Quidco. If you aren't on Quidco, let me know so I can chuck you a referrers code and I can get dorrah, too.

I used to run iTunes via VMWare and it was quite nippy. I don't know if that was because it ran Intel though.