WINDOWS ON A MACINTOSH!?

  I've actually got a lot to say on this topic. Putting Windows on a Macintosh has been attempted for years on older platforms with programs like "VirtualPC". However, because of the significant differencse in hardware between Macs and PCs, at best, VirtualPC was lame if it worked at all. Today's Macs are built on the Intel chip which is the same chip found in other PCs and therefore, the coding is the same and calls to the processor do not need to be translated before they can be processed. Of course, PCs may also have other manufacturer's chips in them instead like AMD or Celeron. But all of these chips are based on the CISC (Complex Instruction Set Chipset) architecture whereas Apple's PowerPC chip is based on the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Chipset) architecture. It is debatable which is better. IBM is still using the PowerPC chip in its high end servers and continues to innovate (albeit at a slower pace compared to Intel) the industry with impressive improvements to the RISC technology.

It was actually a joint cooperative between Motorola, IBM and Apple that built the PowerPC chip. Motorola eventually removed itself from the project and left Apple and IBM as the sole developers of the technology. Apple, as we know, eventually dropped the PowerPC chip in its line of Macs and started using the Intel chip instead. I believe this had more to do with marketing strategy than performance. The PowerPC chip still boasts a very impressive performance but because the way chips are marketed, the PowerPC chip consistently showed slower speeds compared to the CISC chips. Though performance was often much better, Apple who already maintained a very small market share had additional hurdles selling their computers when the PC world would always have a faster perceived chip in their machines.

  Apple's own (free) Boot Camp solution offers the most seamless Windows solution on the Mac. But there are other programs available that offer other features that may be more desirable since you now have the option to downgrade your Mac to Windows XP or Vista. Other programs like Parallels Desktop for Macintosh or VMware's Fusion or Codeweaver's Crossover are examples of other 3rd party applications that allow you to install Windows on a Mac. The biggest and most immediate difference between these applications and Boot Camp is that with Boot Camp, you must restart the Mac in order to boot into Windows. Although this is quite inconvenient, it does offer some advantages that should be considered when choosing a system. The advantage to start Windows without restarting the Mac so what are the advantages to having to restart the Mac?

  For someone who is unfamiliar with the Mac at all, this may be your prefered method to use Windows. It offers the exact same experience to the user as a real Windows machine would. Another benefit to this method is that all system resources are dedicated to just the one operating system. You may find that some Windows applications run more smoothly in Boot Camp than within Parallels or Crossover. It has often been said that Windows runs faster on a Mac than a PC. It is very likely that Boot Camp is responsible for that.

  Personally, I much prefer Parallels to any other application. I like having two operating system open at the same time. I can share the desktop between the two operating systems and sharing files between them is much easier too. Even after the performance hit which is minor when using Parallels, Windows might still be faster on a Mac. I love being able share my documents between the two operating system without having to restart. Then there is "Crossover" which is really interesting. It allows you to run Windows applications without having to install Windows! Not all applications are supported but their website is very informative and I have found Crossover to be extremely efficient for certain things. For instance, when all I need to do is install this little application to help setup a device that doesn't come with a Macintosh version, this often does the trick. It will attempt to install applications that are not supported. I should also mention that there is a free open source project that supposedly fascilitates installing Windows on your Mac. I have not tried it but may be worth looking into. However, the other programs aren't that much money and so I don't mind paying for a program that will continually be supported and tweaked.

  First and foremost, before you even consider putting Windows on your Mac, ask your self why? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. An official version of Windows will cost an additional $300 (approximately). And for those who complain that the Mac is already an expensive computer, this is clearly adding more to the price. Is Windows going to serve a particular purpose? That is, if you must run an application that is not built for the Mac, then maybe you have a legitimate excuse. But if on the other hand, you simply use Microsoft Office and you want to continue working on your Word documents, then just buy Microsoft Office for the Mac. Yes, Microsoft develops applications for the Mac too. It is much less cumbersome and much more convenient to run Mac-native apps on a Mac than running Windows and then the Windows version of the application. Think of all the resources (RAM, HD space, processor cycles) that you'd be wasting when you can accomplish the same task with the Macintosh version of Word on you Mac. Thirdly, consider that you will need to protect yourself on the Windows side of things just like you would on a Windows computer. That adds to the price of this investment. You'll also be taking a performance hit (albeit, maybe small) to run these other programs in the background (just like a "real" PC).

  Second, from a technical perspective, you should know that you have essentially doubled the amount of maintenance that your Mac now requires. It is true that the hardware is shared but now you are supporting two operating systems which essentially is no different than if you were supporting two computers. This is most important if you are replacing systems based on the premise that you can get two computers for the price of one Mac. Support and maintenance on these Macs are more and ought to be considered as 1.5 computers per machine. Most school or lab environments will require the full version of Windows running to accomplish their tasks and so you would still need a Windows technician to keep things running smoothly on the Windows side. In addition, do be fooled- even though Windows is running on a Mac, the Windows environment is still just as suseptible to viruses as a regular PC. Having only one computer does take up half the space of two computers, though.