Right click using VMware Fusion

Posted by Bob O’Dell

Having used Windows for so many years there were some nice utilities and applications that I just found I couldn’t live without.  I finally loaded VMware Fusion so I could continue to use my previous laptop just the same way (used Converter to take a snapshot of the Dell laptop - pretty cool feature).  To my surprise the XP Pro image actually ran better inside my MacBook Pro.

However I soon found that I could no longer right click inside my Windows Office apps and some other general applications.  Every time I tried to highlight a word and right click I received an error message that said “This is not a valid selection”.  Here is how I solved the problem and the thread that helped me do it.

In systems preferences of the Mac OS, go into the keyboard and mouse settings. In the mouse settings implement two-finger clicking. With this enabled, you can perform a “right click” (on both the Mac side and Windows side) by placing two fingers on the trackpad and clicking the bar.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1004692

Macbook Pro - No real delete key?

Posted by Bob O’Dell

I’ve been a long time windows user, from Windows 3.1 to Vista, and wanted to give the Mac craze a try.  Not sure why but I had heard enough about them and maybe it was the great commercials that really hit home.  As I’m 6 months into the switch I’ve never looked back and continue to find more and more ways that a Mac continues to outperform Windows.  However there are a few really annoying things that I’ve spent hours and hours researching on the Internet to get to work just the way I want them to (or what I was used to seeing happen in Windows all those years).  These blog entries will be dedicated to sharing my research and findings in hope that it saves some time for others having similar experiences.

I bought a MacBook Pro 15″ and one of the first things I noticed was how the only delete key worked.  In fact it was more a notice of how it didn’t work.  With Windows the typical behavior is that the delete key deletes the character to the right of the cursor.  In Windows there is another key, located in exactly the same spot on the keyboard, that says Backspace and this deletes the character to the left of the cursor.  For whatever reason Mac decided to make their delete key delete the character to the left of the cursor, just the same as the Backspace key.  How annoying….

To get the same type of functionality with the Mac delete key that you’d expect you need to hold down the “fn” key on the Macbook Pro keyboard.  By holding this down and then pressing the delete key you get the expected delete of the character to the right of the cursor action.