As most of you know I use both Macs and PCs for different things. My laptop happens to be a cheapy Macbook, you can buy one of these today for about $1k, tho I got mine for less by buying used from someone who couldnt quite figure it out =)
You can even go to Macmall and get them preinstalled with Windows XP via Bootcamp (which we discuss below):
The nice thing about the Macs is that they have two ways of working directly with Windows XP and Vista applications. The first is called Bootcamp, and this is software built into OSX (pronounced Oh Ess Ten) Leopard which is the only OS that Apple makes and supports directly on its products. You can read all the details about that here:
Using Bootcamp enables a feature that Linux users have used for decades, also known as 'Dual Booting'. In other words, in addition to having Leopard and all your Mac apps loaded onto your machine, you create a seperate area of your hard disk, called a partition, where you load a full copy of either Windows XP or Vista and each time your machine turns on it chooses to run that OS instead of OSX. To make this choice simply hold down the Option (alt) key until the Bootcamp window comes up and lets you choose which one you want to run. The advantage to this is that this option runs the Microsoft OS and all its applications that you have purchased and installed at full speed. The disadvantage is that you have to take a significant chunk of your hard disk and dedicate it to a second OS and second set of applications and data. Also, when running in this mode you lose ALL the advantages of running in OSX, for example it is rediculously easy to get malware such as viruses, trojans, and spyware unless you install the right software to protect against all of that junk too, which adds to the overhead of your OS and slows things down.
A second method is to run a program called a Virtual Machine that allows you to run an emulator of Windows XP or Vista in a windown directly within OSX. Two of the biggest VM vendors are Parallels and VMware Fusion. I dont have a lot of experience with those but the advantage is that you don't have to Dual Boot but the disadvantages are that the applications don't run at native speeds and you still have the possibility of getting nasty Windows Malware if you arent careful. You need a lot of memory (and patience) to make this stuff work but if you get it going you can actually drag and drop data between OSX and XP which is kind of neat. To see those kinds of software, start here:
One final option if all you are concerned about is Microsoft Office documents is to simply buy MS Office 2008 for OSX. This is a native OSX application that leverages the cool things that Macs do that Windows doesnt and has a nice graphical overhaul. You can import and export .doc and .docx files so its fully compatible with most of the new features enabled in Office 2007 on the PC.
It's not all roses tho, there is limited support for the other apps besides Word and almost no Access support:
Also, microsoft has now enabled older version (2004) of Office on OSX to open and close .docx files too:
By the way, we now have 2 Macs in our labs accross the hall in HH500, but they do not have Bootcamp on them. I haven't tried them to find out if they have Parallels or VMware yet, but I would be shocked if they do. Try them out tho, it's an easy way to get a free look at the Mac world, and if you haven't been to an Apple store yet, you might be shocked at how fun and elegant they are. Beware the fabled 'Reality Distortion Field' in there tho, it's like a seperate universe...
More on this as the semester develops, but if you have any questions about any of this or are thinking over buying your first Mac and arent quite sure what the best choices are, I'd be happy to discuss it with you! Remember next Tuesday is a big release event for Apple so I wouldnt buy anything from them until then! It's probably just new iPods but you never know what else they might deliver. I've been waiting for BluRay support for 2 years now, maybe this will be the time they finally get it out there!
Sam
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