Which Power Software should I use? Is CyclingPeaks the standard?

Ariel

Hello,
The long awaited day finally happened.. I got my Powertap! Now I'm trying to sort out how to use it best. I have a Mac computer and the Powertap came with PowerAgent software. I was reading "Training and Racing with a Power Meter" which seems to refer mostly to CyclingPeaks software. It seems PowerAgent doesn't have all the same features as CyclingPeaks, am I wrong? I guess CyclingPeaks doesn't work on Mac without some modifications like putting Windows on my machine (which I really didn't want to do). What are you other Mac users using for Power Software? Does everyone pretty much use CyclingPeaks as the gold standard? Am I going to be better off just finding a way to run CyclingPeaks rather than any other software?

Thanks for your help.
Ariel

grahamspringett

PowerAgent is OK, and I was happy using it on my Mac, but once I started investigating Cycling Peaks and actually playing with the demo, I found it by far a better tool.

I have an iMac with Intel chip and I use Parallels to run Windows so I can use Cycling Peaks. You need to download the USB cradle software to use the Power Tap but once you're set up, you can use Cycling Peaks freely.

I have found Windows to be horribly unreliable (I have XP) and have had to reinstall it twice in only a few months, largely due to viruses finding their way in. My tip - if you want to use the internet, do it through the Mac, not using Windows via Parallels.

Fortunately I backed up my Power Tap data (you can use a handy included tool called Parallels Explorer to rummage around and copy files without launching Parallels itself and encountering Windows problems) so I was fine. I also use Snapshots, which takes, well, snapshots, of the Windows system so if you have major problems you can revert to an earlier snapshot. This kills newer data in Cycling Peaks, but if you've backed up it's fine.

If you have an earlier Mac, you can use Virtual PC or something similar. That worked well for me using the old Power Tap software.

There are little obstacles to overcome, but believe me, the amount of information you get from Cycling Peaks is well worth the effort. It's like using Photoshop instead of some free shareware to manipulate images, the difference is that great in my opinion.

Ariel

Thanks grahamspringett for your detailed response. When viruses manage to come in, are they able to infect the Mac side of things? Or do they just screw up the Windows side? I think I am going to try out the CyclingPeaks. But I really don't want to mess up my Mac over it.

Thanks,
Ariel

lanierb

Yes.

flup

Did you try other software, besides Cyclingpeaks?