Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Go to Bootcamp

Don’t know whether to buy a new WinTel PC or try a Mac? Why not try both?

I have a long history with Apple and Mac computers, ever since I was a kid. As an adult, I waited patiently to get one and now I finally have a Mac Mini, running a dual-core Intel CPU.

The nice thing about it is that you can enjoy both worlds. Using a program from Apple called Bootcamp you can install as many operating systems on your Mac as you'd like. I currently have Mac OS X 1.4.9 and Windows XP SP2. I considered adding Linux, but didn't see the point, as Mac OS X has a UNIX kernel.

Bootcamp made it very easy for me to installl Windows XP:

  1. It partitioned the hard disk
  2. Created an image disc with all the drivers needed to be installed in Windows
  3. Prepared the machine for installation
  4. And finally, installed a control panel, in both OSs, allowing easy switching between them.

Of course, the cons are:

  1. One OS at a time
  2. To share disk space between the 2 OSs, it has to be formatted to FAT32, as Mac OS X doesn't allow writing to an NTFS partition, and XP can only read HFS with the aid of a third party software.

But still, I consider getting my parents a Mac Mini, even just for the form factor and ease of use...

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