I'm a little blown away. You know that familiar instrumental swell that Windows makes when it loads up? Well, I've just heard it coming from the speakers on my iMac. Holy crap!
Windows XP is back in my life. Today my son installed "Boot Camp" on my iMac and, after an evening of installing all the old gang of Windows-only programs, I'd have to say it works flawlessly. It has also never looked better than it does on the 20-inch iMac screen.
It all started several months ago when the world turned upside down -- for the second time in the year. Apple flipped it over earlier in January when it came out with its Intel based computers and then, building on that change, they announced that people who bought those computers could install the dreaded Windows!
As a 20-year PC veteran who just switched to Apple last December with an iMac G5... and then traded it in for an iMac Core Duo with the Intel chip... I had pretty much decided that I was done with Windows and moving on. Now, with Boot Camp, I can go whichever way I need to.
I don't intend to use it too often. I love this new iMac and think it's a superior computing experience to Windows and PCs in virtually every way you can measure. But I do have some software that only wants to run on Windows, like Family Tree and it's nice to know I can use the Windows environment when I want to.
Boot Camp is now available as a free download on Apple's web-site and will be a part of the next operating system to come out of Apple, Leopard.
I tend to work at home but I do share a lot of project files with people who have Windows computers. Even though this iMac has been great at compatability so far, this can only provide extra security. And for people who are forced to work by day in a Windows environment but want to come home to Mac, well, this is a real gift. I partioned off 20 gigs of the computer (out of 250) for Windows. I have the option when starting up to pick Mac or Windows. My default is, of course, Mac.
If you've been waiting to buy an Apple, and if you can afford it, I can't see much reason not to own one now. They didn't even pay me to say that...
