Using Forte Free Agent newsreader

Question

Purchased my iMac 27" about a week ago but just opened this morning. All has gone well until I tried using Forte Free Agent newsreader. The program worked fine on my Dell laptop, but on the iMac the executable file is listed as a document. When I try to run it it opens as a sort of text file. Is there a different way to use this program, or is it simply not capable of running on the Apple OS?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Crash777 wrote:
I've heard a little about Parallel but nothing about Crossover and Bootcamp. What criteria would you recommend to help me decide which is the best choice? I use Forte Free Agent but it's not an essential item. I use MS Office 2003 quite a bit, especially Outlook, Excel and Word and so I'd like to be able to continue that. I've already begun looking at MS Office for Mac.
One suggestion I got was partitioning the hard drive and installing Windows 7 so that I could run all those apps that are supported by Windows and MS, but not Apple. Does that make sense?
IMHO it would be foolish to install MS Windows on your iMac for only MS Office duties for several reasons. First you if feel you have to have MS Office in order to be compatible with your co-workers then you will find MS Office 11 a very capable product. However if you have been using MS Office out of habit then iWork is a an extremely capable product line. Your iMac already has Mail, Address Book, and iCal which integrate beautifully together and replace Outlook and are robust products. In addition the iWork and iLife applications integrate very well together. And iWork documents can be shared with MS Office users. MS Office 11 is also a very capable product but for most people it's overkill.
While you could run MS Windows on your Mac from what I can tell from your needs it's a waste of money, time and resources. Your iMac has Boot Camp built into it, Boot Camp allows you to turn your Mac into a machine that runs 2 operating systems, MS Windows and OS X. However if you take this route when you install Win 7 (which you would have to purchase unless you already own a license) that part of your Mac is susceptible to all the maladies (viruses and malware, funky drivers, etc...) you were probably trying to get away from. Also if you use Boot Camp you are running either Windows or OS X but you can't run them simultaneously. If you were a gamer or someone that has to have Windows only applications or were doing 3D CAD/CAM work then Boot Camp would be a good solution. However for MS Office duties it's a total waste!
You could also use virtualization software like Parallels or Fusion or other alternatives. If you insist on running Win 7 on your iMac then for your needs this would be the route I'd recommend. However again whenever you run Windows you are susceptible to viruses and other malware. The reason being is you can run Windows and OS X side by side. When I switched to a Mac several years ago I did this and ran MS Office apps which I quickly weaned off of, I happened to use Fusion as my virtualization tool and found the performance good. However after I began using Mail, Address Book, iCal and iWork I found out how clunky, old fashioned and well to be blunt crappy MS Office really is so I abandoned Office! While i still have Fusion and Windows loaded on my machine I don't recall the last time it was used.
My recommendation is spend more time with those links and learn how powerful your machine is the way it shipped. Play with the tools it already has (Mail, Address Book, iCal) and I think you may be not surprised but shocked how capable and easy to use they are. Macs aren't like PCs, what I mean by that is PC's come loaded with lots of useless software that is simply awful. However Macs come with extremely robust software which includes iLife (Garage Band, iMovie, iWeb) and Mail, Address Book, iCal. If you decide to take a look at iWork ($79 retail but easily found for much less) that includes Numbers (Excel replacement), Pages (Word replacement) and Keynote (PowerPoint replacement.)