Fortune has smiled upon me and I was selected to be an early tester of Codeweavers Crossover product for the Mac. (The link is to the Linux version, no Mac product page available yet!)

So far, I have been able to run quite a few apps to some degree or another, which is pretty amazing. The list includes:

  • Office 2003 - Mixed success. Word runs, but has some font and occasional crashing issues; Outlook is in a bad way (but CW knows this and is working on it). Excel and PowerPoint seemed to work quite well!
  • Mirc (for fun!)
  • FlashFXP - Runs surprisingly well, was able to do file transfers and other activities at pretty much full speed
  • FastStone Image Viewer - Was able to browse thumbnails, perform image editing functions, etc.

All in all, it’s pretty amazing for a first alpha. 
 
It has lots of helpful features, like…

  • software installation wizard: helps install software from CD, folder, or .exe or (in some cases) will pull the files right off the net.
  • Crossover Menu: adds all of your programs into a special Crossover menu for quick launching. However, at this stage the menu is IN Crossover, which is kind of annoying :) They are working on an exporter that will put app aliases right on your desktop or elsewhere
  • file associations(!): When I copy over .doc and .xls files, they get actual Word/Excel icons and opening them launches Crossover+Word (or Excel). Tres cool!

At any rate, it’s early going, but looking VERY promising. Maybe I won’t need Parallels
for all of my apps :)

If you have requests for screenshots, or specific apps you want tested, let me know! Email wordpress c/o richardgoodwin.com

Update: AOL 9.0 Screenshot as requested…

AOL_90_install
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