The problem with dual-booting Windows is the inconvenience of having to restart your Mac entirely. The problem with virtualizing Windows is that it can be unreasonably slow for a prolonged session. Now that Boot Camp and Parallels work together, you can choose between virtualizing or booting into your Windows depending on what you have to do.
No restarting to use Bootcamp. Just select “Switch to Windows” from OS X, and your machine goes to sleep. Wake it up and your in Windows. You can do the same thing once in Windows to switch back to mac. VERY VERY NICE feature, no reason to use virtualization for me at least.
If given a choice between privacy and security or convenience, we’ll choose convenience every time. The problem is that on the Internet most people don’t get to choose. Most privacy losses that result from technology are the result of ignorance. That used computer you just purchased that has the previous owners Quicken data intact on the hard-drive; the countless unsecured wireless networks; the accidental responses made by family and friends to a phishing site that is lucky enough to target the same bank used by the unlucky victim. The privacy concerns over iTunes putting your personal information in the music you buy are not worth losing sleep over.
Most people willingly give away more information to sweepstakes, magazine subscriptions, contests, market surveys, free website subscriptions all of whom immediately turn around and sell your mailing list information. And they usually do it for something less tangible than a song for which they are willing to pay a whole dollar.
The information embedded in the music is their to protect the artists and the content publishers. Right or wrong, music is a business and they believe they have to take steps to protect their revenue. These steps are not always well considered but the intent is clear. In return, with the removal of DRM, we get the music with none of the restrictions. I can now use my iTunes music on any player or any computer with no restrictions. I no longer have to worry about losing my licenses and thereby access to my music. Is it worth it? Sure it is…its convenient!
For the past week we’ve had this strange situation where all of the XP and Vista machines kept jumping ahead by an hour. Our domain controllers for our Windows network were correct along with any older OS’es we had in the office but the XP machines and Vista machines…they just couldn’t seem to get it straight.
This turns out to be one of those times where we had it backwards. The XP and Vista machines were correct…sort of. Since Bush decided to change the Daylight Savings Time date, the information stored in the OS for when DST started was incorrect. Patches were released for XP and 2003 machines and I assume that Vista had the correct information built in already and therefore didn’t need patching. What didn’t happen, was Microsoft didn’t patch W2K, which is what our domain controllers happen to be running.
I’ve finally found a minute to finish my review of Apple’s Boot Camp. While I’ve read mixed reviews elsewhere, it worked beautifully…as long as I could live with certain limitations.
First, it assumes that you only have a single partition on your hard-drive with Mac OS X. When you first run Boot Camp, you must have a single HFS partition on your hard-drive that takes up all available space. When I first tried to install Boot Camp, I decided to pre-partition my hard-drive with an HFS partition, an NTFS partition and an ext3 partition along with a linux swap partition. Turns out, I wasted my time. Boot Camp simply didn’t want to operate in that environment. Read the rest of this entry >>>
Windows has a long history of “borrowing” features from the Mac. Not that this is a bad thing…almost all successful products are a new and improved version of something that came before it. It does seem like a large number of features that were introduced on the Mac have moved to Windows in a new improved form. The situation was so bad at one point that the two companies sued each other over the right to the trash can. Who won? Microsoft ended up using a recycle bin instead of a trash can. Regardless, today my primary development workstation runs Windows XP Pro so Microsoft must be doing something right.
Enter Windows Vista…the fact is, looks do matter and Windows Vista looks gorgeous! Vista seems to be all about eye-candy from its transparent windows and title bars to the new alternative Alt-Tab interface. Read the rest of this entry >>>
