Running Windows Apps in Mountain Lion

        "It's cheaper than purchasing Parallels and Windows 7 just to run a few Windows applications," explains John Carter as he sends info on Crossover.  He says, "Crossover has a new upgrade for Mountain Lion. Those Mac users who have upgraded to Mountain Lion or are waiting for the Crossover update, I can attest to the fact that the new Crossover upgrade works in Mountain Lion and you can now use Quicken 2010 (Windows app) and other Windows applications under Crossover in Mountain Lion.

        "The issue with the older version of Crossover on Mountain Lion is that the older version required X11. Mountain Lion will not run X11. Instead, Mountain Lion installs XQuartz, which is an upgraded version of X11. Without X11, Crossover will not work in Mountain Lion — or any other Mac OS X version for that matter. So, if you have something other than Mountain Lion and haven't yet used Crossover to run a Windows applications, and you want to do that, you will have to download and install XQuartz to work with the latest version of Crossover. That is, if the latest version of Crossover will run on the earlier versions of Mac OS X.

        "If you do not have a current annual subscription to Crossover to be able to download and install the latest version, it will cost you $59.95. This is far cheaper than purchasing Parallels and Windows 7 just to run a few Windows applications."

Quicken Soon to be Compatible With Lion

Use Quicken?  Jim Hamm tells us, "You may no longer need Quicken, but apparently it will be modified to be compatible with OS X Lion in the near future."  Check it out here.

Quicken, GnuCash, or iBank

        John Carter passes along his latest discovery, "I’ve been an ardent fan of Quicken for many years. Then one day I discovered GnuCash. It was painful to make the switch, but I learned to like the freedom of a free application for managing my personal and small business finances."Then came Lion.   GnuCash does not run on Lion.   Then I discovered iBank. But it’s not free. Darn! "Converting my GnuCash files to iBank was a whole lot less painful than converting from Quicken to GnuCash, and the same should be true for converting from Quicken to iBank. "Using iBank is not quite the same as using Quicken or GnuCash, and I imagine that I will have some gnashing of teeth before I settle in with iBank. And maybe by then GnuCash will be available for Lion. "However, there are major benefits to using iBank over GnuCash: "One is that I can do a query for an entry using keywords and actually get a non-zero result for something I know is there. "Two, I can password protect the entire iBank file. "Three, I can manually sort the registers and put the most used ones at the top of the list. "Four, I can sync iBank to my iPhone. Five, I can create a budget that is really useful. "Six, I can do a live download from almost all of my financial and trade institutions. "Seven, I can get instant stock updates. "Eight, reports are now much more useful and much easier to create. And the list goes on."