How FM use impacts purchasing decisions

[Paul Findon]

On 19 Jun 2008, at 21:06, Rene Stephenson wrote:

> You're right, Dennis. I checked with an IT guru buddy who has done  
> a lot of reworks of Vista machines when his clients got bitten by  
> one of its bugs and wanted to roll back to XP, and he said it was a  
> complete nightmare, every single time, and a couple of times was  
> such a colossal headache that he just told the client to return the  
> computer for a refund and buy an XP machine. He said if I go to a  
> Vista box, I'd better be prepared to do it come what may without  
> looking back.

This is one area where the Mac has always been the clear winner over  
the PC - multiple operating systems.

With a Mac, you simply attach another hard drive, install the OS, and  
use the Startup Disk preference to choose it as your startup OS. Done!

Not so easy on a PC. A long, long time ago, I installed the English  
and Japanese versions of Windows 3.1 on my PC using two separate hard  
drives. To get around the ATA master/slave limitations, I hard wired  
a rear-panel switch to the master/slave jumpers. To switch between  
systems, I shut down, flicked the switch, and rebooted. That was  
after learning about MBR (Master Boot Records) the hard way. Several  
years later I found a pre-wired master/slave switch kit on sale in  
Japanese PC store. Ahh, another patent slips away...

Fast forward nearly 15 years and nothing has changed. I've now got  
the English and Japanese versions of Windows XP on two separate hard  
drives. (Yes, I know about 3rd party tools such as Partition Magic).)

Anyway, with Parallels, you can run multiple virtual machines  
simultaneously. Windows XP, Vista, 2000, Linux, etc. Perfect for  
testing and documenting different systems and beta software.

Paul