VirtualBox from Oracle on a Mac Book Pro?

[Bill George]

Has anyone used Virtual Box from Oracle on a Mac with El Capitan and successfully ran Corel Draw and / or ULS printer driver? I have used AutoDesk Graphic to replace Corel for some limited projects, but If I wanted to use my ULS 460 laser it won't happen on the Mac Book Pro.

[Bill George]

Well I guess I will be the tester, have downloaded and installed Virtual Box Version 5.xxx and allotted 25 Gb of HD space and I am now installing Windows 7 in the box.

[Chris J Anderson]

Hi Bill,

I use VMware fusion, works nice, is vitualbox a freebie ?

[Mike Null]

Bill

Keep us posted if you will. I have been considering that for my Macbook.

[Curt Harms]

Not a Mac user but I do have some experience with VBox on a linux host. I've run into one problem - printing to a networked printer. The default network connection is NAT. I could ping the printer but couldn't get it to print. VBox has 4 virtual network adapters so I made the second one bridged. Now it prints fine. I suspect this might be applicable to networked lasers as well. I'd think USB should just require devices -> USB -> allow the machine.

[Bill George]

Yes Virtual Box from Oracle is free and its well done. I have it installed on the Mac Book Pro with Windows 7 Home 64 bit and I have Corel Draw X6 installed. Now my only issue as I can not figure out the Shared folder business. Must be something I am not understanding as both Windows and Mac OS support. I am still researching and hope to figure it out.

[Mike Null]

Bill
Did you consider Bootcamp?

[Bill George]

Bill
Did you consider Bootcamp?

Not until just now. But all I need to run is Corel Draw, and the Virtual Box is not a permanent partition and can serve my purpose for right now. I just need to figure out the Shared folders so I can transfer files back and forth.

[Robert . Payne]

Hey Bill,

We use Mac's exclusively and run VMWare which is very similar to either VirtualBox or Parallels. If you can afford the $80 I'd recommend VMWare Fusion over VirtualBox especially if you are using Corel a lot inside of the Windows VM. Reason being is VMWare is far more performant in regards to things graphics applications run. If you're just using Corel in the VM to send files to ULS control panel and drive the laser you should be totally fine with either.

One thing to be careful of is make sure your Mac is set to not sleep because the Windows VM wont keep the Mac awake and if the Mac goes to sleep it'll stop ULS mid track. We've ruined a job run without realising this and now have the Mac Mini set to not sleep for 2 hours ( display sleeps after 15 minutes ).

We've also noticed if you suspend the VM and restart it you have to re-connect the USB port to the VM otherwise ULS wont pick up the laser machine.

Also can recommend setting up a shared folder between the Windows VM and the Mac so you don't have to deal with copy pasting files around.

Cheers,
Robert

P.S. We've been using VMWare Fusion and ULS for over a year now with zero issues minus that one random job failure and the usb nonsense.

[Bill George]

Well I gave on the file sharing and just enabled the USB port in VB. Works great! Price for the whole set up was Nada - zero and the USB file transfer via flash drive works great. I really think Corel X6 works better in the Virtual Box than on a real Windows 7 computer and I don't have to put up with 27 must have downloads from Micro$oft every week. Job Done.

[Kev Williams]

Some time ago I installed Virtualbox on this lame 8.1 computer so I could load XP on it. It loaded and works great, but there's zero output to any of the USB ports, which does me zero good... Was like using a free trial version.

This was maybe 2 years ago, and IIRC I read where VB didn't have USB working at the time- so maybe I should run a new version of VB?

and- nobody has to put up with the 'must have' downloads. Just turn all that crap off. My Win7 which I've had for over 2 years, and this 8.1 I'm on now, I never did an update for the 7, and have only done one update since changing 8 to 8.1, and that was months ago. If you feel the need to update, do it manually once a month when you're not using the computer for anything else...

[Bill George]

You need to download the latest VB from Oracle and then download a separate Guest extensions file. Enable USB and I used 2.0 and its good to go. I can read the USB stick just fine in Win 7 and then on the Mac when the VB is closed.
On Windows 7, IF you don't do the upgrades every month or so then your computer will be hopelessly out of date. I let my old desktop downstairs set for maybe 4 months and when turned on it took hours to do the updating. With the Mac, none of that BS.

I do have a program installed on both my Win 7 laptops that removes that annoying Upgrade to Windows 10 crap, don't have the name right off hand...I'm on the Mac. :)

So here is the link, for the GWX Control Panel not sure if it will stay or not and yes I did donate >http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html