Quick! Quick! Buy a Mac...

[TheMonkey]

Or the Cookie Monster virus...ahhh, those were the days.

Indeed.

[Joe Black]

Or the Cookie Monster virus...ahhh, those were the days.

[TheMonkey]

The question is though, will a virus at some point be able to make a jump to the host, i.e. a sort of H51N cross species virus if you like?

Yeah there was one last year but the payload was pretty boring. Whatever happened to the falling letters virus back in the late 80's

[Joe Black]

Just run clean (after each reboot) Windoze under virtualisation.

Interesting idea AtW. I occasionally do something like that with shareware type stuff, download the program to the VPC, use it to do it's job and then scrub the guest OS back to it's last snapshot...

The question is though, will a virus at some point be able to make a jump to the host, i.e. a sort of H51N cross species virus if you like?

[Sysman]

You can run Windies and OS X simultaneously

Apart from not having to dual boot, you can run this with older versions of Windows than XP SP 2, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris etc. if you need to develop/run on those.

Parellels Desktop for Mac on MacIntel machines:

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/

[TheMonkey]

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, but both PCs and their respective operating systems (MacOS, Linux and Windows) are going to die in the next 10 years completely.

[bogeyman]

As so few people use a Macintosh, script kiddies haven't really bothered attacking them. Not much point, is there.

I should have spun that out for about 100 extra lines and made a few grand. claiming to be an 'industry analyst'. Guaranteed to get it published by the BBC if it makes Microsoft look bad.

Money for nothing... but the beeb ain't free.....

I have a Mac-Mini as my desktop machine (the new Intel Core DUO). I installed Bootcamp (dual boot OS X or Windows) and I have the best Windows desktop machine I've ever had - tiny, quiet, fast and reliable. The mac Keyboard takes getting used to (but you could use any USB-attached PC one instead).

I boot OS X now and then, just to play around with, and it's very nice too, but I have too much invested in Windows software at the moment to jump ship.

When my Thinkpad gives up the ghost, I think I'll get a MacBook Pro.

Of course, if you run Windows on a Mac, the same script kiddy and malware issues apply.

[xoggoth]

Not sure about Mac OS but since you can run Windows under UNIX and UNIX under Windows, maybe we should all be doing our everyday tasks using Windows under UNIX under Windows under UNIX etc to about 20 layers deep then all the viruses will get bored trying to find which one you are actually using and give up. Not sure what the performance will be like though.

[TheMonkey]

Just buy a Mac. They are quite cheap actually and very reliable.

I would buy one but I've set myself a budget of £100 (yes one hundred pounds) for any new computer from now. I'm not lining the pockets of "progress" any more by throwing away 50% of the cost of a new PC immediately.

[AtW]

Just run clean (after each reboot) Windoze under virtualisation.

[mcquiggd]

As so few people use a Macintosh, script kiddies haven't really bothered attacking them. Not much point, is there.

I should have spun that out for about 100 extra lines and made a few grand. claiming to be an 'industry analyst'. Guaranteed to get it published by the BBC if it makes Microsoft look bad.

Money for nothing... but the beeb ain't free.....