Open Dental on Mac using CrossOver/Wine

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abiondi
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:43 am

Open Dental on Mac using CrossOver/Wine

Post by abiondi » Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:50 am

Hello all,

My doctor is in the process of switching over to Open Dental from Dentrix G4. I'm very excited, as I believe (as he obviously does) that this is going to be a much simpler, faster and more stable system than what we're using now.

My question is a rather technical one regarding the possibility of installing Open Dental in a CrossOver bottle or Wine installation on my Mac. I understand that it is possible to run a full Windows emulation using VMWare Fusion or Parallels, but I'd like to use something a little less resource-heavy. Does anyone have any experience attempting this type of installation? Any advice on places I could look?

Thank you!

stjames70
Posts: 101
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2009 3:24 am

Re: Open Dental on Mac using CrossOver/Wine

Post by stjames70 » Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:59 am

I am using a MacPro to store the main OD database. We run XP Pro on all of our iMacs under VMWare Fusion. All computers are currently connected through an Airport Extreme Router.
Understand this, OD is very elegantly written, such that even really old Wintel boxes can run it. My 2008 MacPro is 16gb, 4Tb total storage space, dual quad core Xeons. I would get a MacPro strictly because of the Xeon chips. They are server grade -- designed so that they never need to be shut off -- truly, server grade. Our iMacs were the cheapest, fastest dual core chips I could get in 2008. They run VMWare fusion and OD flawlessly. Also I bought Remote Control from Apple so I could control, monitor all iMacs and legacy Dell boxes we have (by the way, I will never buy Dell again -- truly, junk). Let's say this set up is extremely smooth. Oh, and we also run Dexis.

Don't try Wine. You are not going to like tinkering with it.

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