OT: Intel Macs - Official dual boot for XP

If you don't need statistics to make statements about large markets as if they are true, then I am in awe.

NB You could take a Linux live CD to use at work. I don't think Apple offer that, so I expect you will say that live CDs are undesirable. ;)

I was following your example. FWIW I don't know what you mean, but point it out and I'll happily reply.

I've lost track of the number of OSen that I have used, starting with RSX-11M and George III. I've currently got a mix of Macs, Windows ME (boy is that a pile of crap), Windows XP, Linux and even some legacy stuff dotted around. There's a working Oric Atmos in the cupboard next to my office.

The Mac has been the most problem free of all of them. When Microsoft promised to bring out plug and play and it was all hail PCI, I was bemused by all the fuss. My Apple hardware had been plug and play since

1987, plug in peripheral, it worked. Plug in card it worked. And that was it.

Even today, Windows remains plug and pray. Everything I have installed under Windows including printers fails to install and turns into a nightmare of loading and unloading drivers, updating installation disks, searching Windows update in order to get a driver that is almost invariably the wrong one or for a slightly different revision of hardware. Worst of the lot has to be installing WiFi cards/dongles. Even after you've installed the drivers, software, hardware following the giant A2 foldout pierce of paper instructions written in pidgin English by someone in Taiwan it still doesn't bloody work. If you check the device manager it sneers at you and says that the device is working perfectly and whatever it is, printer, disk drive, card, whatever the bloody OS won't sodding well load it.

Crash/Restart/Nothing/Restart/Crash/Restart on and bloody on.

And Linux, that's wonderfully plug and play... provided of course that you have correctly hand edited the 38 configuration files needed to get plug and play working in the first place and provided that the clown who put the distro together knew what he was doing. Most of them don't have the vaguest idea what components to assemble to arrive at working OS and simply palm off something that will need eight solid days of configuration before it can be made to run vi.

And the manual will be Latvian with overtones of spaced out Dutch hippy.

I've always thought certified was a better word than qualified.

The f*ck it was, it was simply better than the PCs of the time. Like poxing RiscOS, it was designed by someone who had just found a pack of big crayons.

Okay. If I can find an example of MS fixing a vulnerability before it has been exploited, will you retract your statement that "Microsoft fixes vulnerabilites after they have been exploited."? I haven't looked yet btw. :)

But I'm disputing your foundation.

I suppose it comes down to numbers at the end of the day. Relatively, much larger numbers of people buy PCs, so the physical number of people lacking the basic common sense to do things like not open attachments to e-mails from HSBC snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com is of course, statistically, going to be higher.

Just as historically, older Fords have had a bad reputation for reliability because they've often fallen into the hands of pikeys who can't be arsed with (or don't know the meaning of) maintaining them properly.

I've had plenty of windows boxes running >1500 days without reboot.

OSX dose the same but with windows it's a far less painful experience as OSX always tryst to download a load of extra crap like iTunes.

Then why it OSX one of the fastest growing targets for malicious code. Not that Apple want to admit it.

They are undesireable when your desktop PC has to access the company intranet, meaning you're stuck with whatever OS you're provided with.

The point being, that, both myself and RichardK have used a rather large variety of systems and OSs, but both arrived at the conclusion that OSX is by far the best choice of OS for everyday use. Most people have only ever experienced Windows, but insist on saying that it's better than everything else, despite no experience to show them otherwise.

Where on earth do you get this idea? I assure you that BT sent me an Intel Anypoint modem to use with it, some USB tripe thing, and when I was done with it, my dad used it on an old iMac to share the ADSL connection before I managed to persuade him to buy a router.

That's just the weirdest statement I've ever heard, in fact.

Richard

Is that the "ubuntu with the 85 meg of updates after installing" ubuntu?

I arrived at Windows XP via the front door, some stairs, and another door.

VMS just works for the same reasons. Of course it's no reason to choose to use it.

Would I blow, everyone's mind, if I went upstairs and posted from one of my NeXT slabs? Or indeed, ate dessert before lunch?

Richard

That's an amateur effort.

How about I post, via my WiFi network, from a Newton eMate?

I have a Linux box that fits all those criteria. Will you rescind your statement yet? I didn't have to pay for the software. How about now? Okay. I will *never* have to pay for upgrades to any of the included software (which includes a kernel and *thousands* of applications). Now? Hmm. These upgrades can be performed with a couple of mouse clicks (or one command line). Yes, for *all* the applications. Still not liking it? Okay, it runs on standard PC hardware which is cheap. No?

Last shot. I can call it iLinux.

Windows is a pretty bad benchmark.

Let's hear about how easy the iApps make things...

Heh - I spent some time throwing Linspire and Ubuntu at some old PCs that were running 98. Ended up reinstalling 98 on them as it was faster, more usable and installed much simpler.

I have no problem installing most operating systems, ubuntu seems to use a strange version of parted that screws up on about 1/3 of the low end systems I've tried it on, and you end up running it from the command line - not something a noddy install should force you to do just to make it work.

Yes, well, that's probably because it's not really a system for the average home user, is it?

If we're talking industrial scale stuff, then you have to go a long way to beat AS/400 systems running the IBM 4890(?) EPOS system ;-)