A Few Bootcamp Questions

[$MacUser$]

I'm going to be picking up a 24" aluminum iMac once the second rev comes out (I'm currently on the last rev of the Powerbook, which is more than enough to hold me off until then).

Besides using it for the internet, email, documents, etc (the basics), I was also interested in Boot Camp. I'm leery, in fact somewhat repulsed, by the idea of installing Windows on a mac, but there are nevertheless some things I just can't do on OSX (playing games being one of them).

Now, I'm not a huge gamer by any stretch, but some of my perennial favorites (counterstrike, etc) require windows. As such, is there any danger to my Mac as a whole by having windows on it, or is the demon OS safely locked away in its own partition?

Also, I'd be interested in getting Windows Vista. Is Vista backwards compatible with Windows XP titles? Any other things I should be aware of in having a dual OS machine?

Thanks for your time.

[aaronw1986]

Windows will get it's own partition, which cannot read, or interfere with the mac partition. It can get the usual Windows problems, but it will be isolated to just the Windows drive.

[$MacUser$]

Windows will get it's own partition, which cannot read, or interfere with the mac partition. It can get the usual Windows problems, but it will be isolated to just the Windows drive.

And I take it that partition can be wiped at will?

Also, how is Vista's backwards compatibility to XP titles?

[sulhaq]

Since you are completely independent of the Windows partition, once you boot up into OS X, you can do absolutely anything you want with it. You can go into the disk utility and erase it, and all of windows will be wiped a clean slate. You can go into bootcamp preferences and merge your partitioned drive back into your main Macintosh HD (doing so will also wipe it clean).

So for example say you were hit with a pretty serious Virus, it will stay completely isolated from your Macintosh HD. In fact, it won't even be able to see that you have another HD. All you need to do is erase your partitioned Windows HD and everything will be wiped clean.