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Is there a benefit/detriment to doing this as opposed to using the Mac version of BIAB? Why have you chosen to use one vs. the other? I understand that there are still some features available for WIndows that are not available for Mac and perhaps this will always be the case (the lead sheet window is the thing of most interest to me, but perhaps I can get around this by importing into notation software- although I guess I'll still have to enter chords manually).




No real reason to use the Windows version. In fact, it really doesn't make sense at all. You'd be using up several gigs of space and losing out on things like the DAW mode. The lead sheet feature isn't worth losing the DAW function to me.

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I am a relatively recent Mac owner (about 5 months) and I recently loaded Virtual Box and Windows 7 on the computer. I have been playing around with Virtual Box, but don't have any Windows software loaded except that which is a part of Windows 7. I am trying to decide if I should crossgrade to BIAB 2011 for Mac or load my 2007 WIndows version and upgrade to 2011.5 when it is available.




I'd crossgrade now. The additions like RealTracks are totally worth it. Unless there is something you absolutely have to have that only runs on Windows (nothing I can think of) I'd ditch bootcamp and reclaim the hard drive space.

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Virtual Box seems to be running pretty well, but I assume that running native Mac software would be a smoother user experience. Thoughts?




There are a couple of things. When you run something like that, it takes a lot of the available memory. So, if your Mac has say 4 gigs, you'd want to give Windows and Mac OS X half (2 gigs) which means, you probably are going to have less than that when you are actually running programs. The more programs you have loaded, the more memory you are going to use, and BOTH programs will start swapping out to virtual memory (ie: hard disk). When that happens, then your hard disk head is going to be jumping all over, and your system will start crawling.

I really can't see why you'd want that. I used to use Band in a Box under Parallels BEFORE they came out with a good Mac version. Like the YEARS between version 12 and version 2008 I believe. My 2006 iMac handled running BinaB alright. But now that there is a fully native, feature rich (not quite complete but darn close) version, there isn't a good reason for me to run the Windows version. So, I took it off, regained quite a few gigabytes in space back, and gained the really cool DAW feature that lets you take BinaB tracks and drag them to your favorite DAW to play with.

About the only thing I miss from the Windows version is the Ear Training thing it had


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