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Would you run another OS on a Mac Intel?

Would you?

  • Yes

    Votes: 102 53.1%

  • No

    Votes: 70 36.5%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 20 10.4%
  • Total voters
    192
Absolutely. It would allow me to give my company back that awful turd of a laptop I need to use once in a while.
 
If it'll run WOW in OSX as fast (or nearly as fast) as my current PC in Windows, I'd not dual-boot. However, the 12" PowerBook I had wasn't fast enough for my liking (and a dual 533DA certainly isn't; upgrading to a dual 1.6 with a Radeon 9800...if that does it, my Dell is going bye-bye and an Intel-based Mac would then be a no-brainer)
 
If dual-boot is any smoother than VirtualPC (hopefully faster at least), then some of the VPC crowd will move to dual-boot in a heartbeat. If the whole process is difficult, confusing, and slow, then casual users will shy away. Why spend hours and hours setting up the system when you only want to run one software title for an hour a week. I might go for it if I can run Pro/E and Visio without any headaches. Some more recent switchers might have licenses for big apps (like Pro/E or Matlab or Mathematica; non-student) that want to switch for pretty much everything they do, but need to keep that one old title running smoothly. Now they could buy two computers, but that would mean sacrificing quality on one of the two. Dual-boot macs could fit nicely into this segment of the market. Of course, Apple probably won't play up the idea that you can install this option, but then again, who knows. Maybe they will just to show off how much faster Mac OS X is when running on literally the same hardware. 😀
 
If Quicken would pull their heads out of their arse with their Mac version (or better yet, Microsoft would release a Mac version of Money), then I'd have zero interest in running another OS on my Mac.
 
Unless/until they manage to get .exe's to run seamlessly on OS X, yes. It's damned foolish to say that anything you can do on windows can be done on Mac. The fact is that there's a LOT more companies building windows apps than Mac apps, so naturally there will be more/greater selection of windows apps than Mac apps. Of course, I'd never use windows for normal, every-day computing, as Mac is CLEARLY superior. 😛
 
I would love to see dual booting, as long as they could switch between the two OS fast.

I really doubt this will happen though.
 
Ha! That's a good one.

Installing Windows is just asking for trouble. Don't even get me started about installing Windows on a Mac.
 
jmort said:
Do any of you guys suppose the ability to dual boot might hurt Apple. I've heard that this was a mistake IBM made with OS/2 warp (lol, remember those commercials?) when they made their stuff dual-bootable, thus removing any incentive for developers to make software for OS/2 since a user could just boot into windows to run it.
Click to expand...
In this case, I don't believe it will.

What I believe will happen, is more folks will try a Mac since they know if all else fails they can still go back to Windows on it. Worst case is that they have a more expensive PC. Best case is that Mac OS X works well for them and they have no need to use the PC side.

It sort of creates a win-win situation.

Sushi
 
physics_gopher said:
If dual-boot is any smoother than VirtualPC (hopefully faster at least), then some of the VPC crowd will move to dual-boot in a heartbeat.
Click to expand...
Personally, I like VPC.

All I need to do is set up my HD/system the way I want and make a backup of the HD image on to CD/DVD. Then when my Winders system goes down the toilet all I need to do is trash the current HD image, and copy the back up one from CD/DVD. Takes a few minutes and my Winders machine is up and running perfectly with all settings intact. This is even simpler than a restoring an image on a real PC -- quicker too.

Who knows, maybe Microsoft will make VPC to run faster since it will have less to emulate. Why would Microsoft do this? Income! Many Mac users still need VPC for their needs because they cannot get away from Winders entirely. So this way, they create a better Winders environment for the user which increases VPC sales. And for Microsoft they win again because not only do VPC sales go up, so do Winders sales. So for Microsoft there is really no down side other than development costs.

And what is really cool, by making a better VPC, you can focus on the whole market. Many folks are not comfortable with dual, triple or quad booting a PC.

VPC becomes the work around. Plus, VPC can boot much faster if you exit and save the current status which is a very nice feature.

Sushi
 
Out of curiosity for the "purists", if you ever had a need to regularly run a Windows-only program (god forbid) that didn't run in VPC (double-god forbid), would you prefer to run it on a separate stand-alone Windows machine, or to be able to dual-boot?
 
I said no simply because of space-saving and because it's windows 😛

Most installs take 5GB these days, not something I want to give away on my mobile for the simple convenience of having XP for that twice-a-year situation where my PB can't do something.

On a desktop I might do it, maybe, but I have a running PC that is more than fast enough to run XP alone....all I do is have it fold all day because I don't use Windows anymore 😀
 
I would say yes, but its very conditional. First off, the main reason I would dual boot anyway would be for games... If WINE ran at 75+% speed for games and applications (I use autocad currently, for which there is no OS X version) then I would gladly use that. However, my gaming days are limited and for those times that I do game, its almost always on a console, so that part of the equation is rapidly dwindling. Also, if I leave this job and no longer do CAD, then that part of the equation would be gone and all that would be left in windows is ... well, solitaire 🙂 .

But if i did dual-boot, it would be OS X and a compact installation of Win2k with a lot of stuff turned off.
 
Interesting thread... If you were to install Windows on an Apple computer would it still be susceptible to PC viruses? If not, then I don't see any reason NOT to install another OS for the purpose of convenience.
 
If Windows was able to access the Apple partitions, I don't see any reason that a Windows virus couldn't do some damage to the Apple side.

fdisk is fdisk (or diskpart is diskpart ... whatever it's called nowadays). 🙂
 
No way!

I bought Macs to get AWAY from Windows and all its problems....no way would I ever contaminate either of my new beauties or any future Macs I would be buying by adding in Windows.... UGH! I still have an old WIN XP Pro laptop and an old WIN XP Pro desktop, both of which work and if I need something that is accessible only by using Windows, fine, I'll fire one of them up. I haven't run into that situation much, except for occasionally needing to view/hear something with Windows Media Player or Real Player, neither of which I have installed on my Macs and neither of which do I intend to install on my Macs.

OTB
 
Yuk! Why would I want to do that? 😱

And go back to firewalls, anti-virus and shedloads of spyware? I don't think so! Urgh! Just the thought of it! <shudder>
 
Peter Griffin said:
Interesting thread... If you were to install Windows on an Apple computer would it still be susceptible to PC viruses? If not, then I don't see any reason NOT to install another OS for the purpose of convenience.
Click to expand...

Of course in would be susceptible. Its not the hardware that virus attack, its the software 🙄

Longhorn is looking promising so I don't see why people are off put by dual booting. I would'nt dual boot for windows xp though, its not worth it.
 
i'd have vista installed on a separate HDD (when vista comes out). that would be good for games, plus if the HDD gets infected then i could just format it from the OSX HDD
 
i run another OS on my main mac anyway, so nothing changes, the linux games situation is improving as now i dont even run windows on my pc as i can play WoW and battlefield 2 on it under linux.

though i may have to run windows when i go to uni.....
 
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