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[Spinless]

Sometimes, a man is forced to climb down from his high horse and admit, perhaps macs and OSx aren't quite as good as the fanatics will tell you they are.
I am not that man. No, I have always openly stated, I use macs because I am simple.
Unfortunately, plenty of the things I enjoyed doing on a PC can't be done on a mac. Plenty of programs don't have a mac alternative! This is where I'd like you to help me! I would like to run windows software on my mac. I'm not sure that dual booting is the way to do it, and I have no idea what the alternatives are.
First person to say something along the lines of 'get a real computer' gets added to the list. Keep your bigoted POV out of my thread!

Windows on a mac: GO!

[KvP]

It used to be the case that if you wanted to play games on a computer, you didn't get a mac. That was just the way it was. Apple just wasn't interested in gamers. You had the simple packaged games, some of which were pretty good, and then you had the myriad games ported to the mac (Mechwarrior 2, You Don't Know Jack) as well as, of course, the Blizzard catalogue. But that really wasn't enough. You had "virtual PC" modes where you could play some simple Windows games (I remember playing Civ 2 on a powermac) but as with a lot of emulators, it ran like molasses.

Nowadays, mainly due to Intel's deal with Apple, you can have a mac and play games via Boot Camp. At least, that's what I've heard. I haven't tried it. But it looks promising.

[thepugs]

As usual, Lifehacker has the answer!

http://lifehacker.com/software/parallels/hack-attack-how-to-run-windows-and-mac-apps-sidebyside-with-parallels-221002.php

Between Parallels and VMware Fusion you should have no problem running most Windows programs.

[RedLion]

Macs are great for creative projects, but even with the aforementioned programs, if you're serious about computer gaming, you're going to eventually want a PC. Macs still just don't cut it, in the same way that they don't cut it for word processing and such.

[Spinless]

I never mentioned games! Macs run the roms I use just fine. That's pretty much all I need! There's occasionally some niche software that catches my eye and is windows only, is all.
I filled my hard drive with media files pretty quick, I'm converting the file format of every video file I have and shrinking the resolution, just so I have the space to run an windows environment.
I hope I can find that XP installation disc!

I've never tried dual booting or anything like this before as I don't like the idea of partitioning off a section of disk space. I also figured that if I was running bonafide windows, that would put me at added risk for viruses.

[Ozymandias]

You're only at more risk for viruses if you're an idiot, basically.

So, yeah, don't dual boot Windows. Use VMWare.

[Spinless]

Thankyou for the vote of confidence.

[öde]

How big is your hard drive?

If you got any malware it would only affect the windows partition of your harddrive. Plus you're not the kind of person to click on 'free smileys' and similar ads, or download toolbars and crap, right?

I guess Parallels and VMWare will probably have you sorted, but if you want an extremely fast, solid windows platform, get a little TinyXP partition.

[Spinless]

Once, in a rush to grab everything from the sendspace thread, I accidentally clicked an ad on sendspace, and it opened like a million other ads, and then tons of virus alerts popped and OH GAWD.
Alls I'm saying is, accidents happen.

[0bsessions]

Viruses really aren't that hard to avoid. In about ten years of using PCs, the only time I ever picked up a virus was when living with my ex and she infected my hard drive with one. As I believe I've said here before, my initial response was to tell her that if she expected me to use a condom, she'd best learn how to use a fucking Antivirus program.

Anyone who's been using a computer for any length of time should know how to avoid viruses.