Re: I am tired of Ms-Vista and I want to move to a Mac, but I have some questions

Juan I. Cahis <jiclbchSINBASURA@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

1) Apparently, it is very convenient to have some sort of
capability to run Ms-Windows programs in a Mac, and I understand that
they are at least, three alternatives to do that: BootCamp, Parallels,
and Vmware. Of all of these, I know only Vmware, because I use it now
in order to have "Windows under Windows" and "Linux under Windows" in
my PC, and I am very happy of this product. But, which of these three
products do you think that it is a better solution for a Mac host?
Could you give me an URL where I can see the WEB page of Parallels and
BootCamp details?

If you know of VMWare already, the Mac VMWare product is simillar,
except that the performance of the Mac product might be better than that
of what you've used before, depending what hardware you used it on. The
recent Intel chips used in current Macs have feature specifically
designed to make things like VMWare work well. It shows. I used to use
VMWare many years ago to run Windows on my Linux box. It worked, but
performance was pretty poor - good enough for what I was doing, but only
because I wasn't doing much. Performance of virtualization on recent
Macs is actualy quite decent.

Parallels is competition for VMWare. Same general idea - just a
competing product. I've more experience with Parallels, but I've heard
good things about VMWare. I actually own both (though I bought VMWare
recently and haven't really used it yet). It isn't as though they are
expensive compared to the cost of the computer. Google finds their web
sites pretty well.

VMWare for the Mac (also called VMWare fusion) -
<http://www.vmware.com/mac>

Parallels - <http://parallels.com>

Bootcamp comes for "free" with the OS. It is technically in beta now, to
have a full release with OS X 10.5 (supposedly inext month). It is a
dual boot solution, allowing you to boot either Windows or OS X. It is
not as convenient as VMWare/Parallels because you have to reboot to
change which OS you are running, rather than run them both at once. This
also means that you can't do things like network between the two
operating systems, as that needs them both running. The main advantage
is that it gets you the full performance of the hardware. This is
imporant if you want to do things like most games. Few Windows games
will work decently (or at all) in either VMWare or Parallels, though
that situation is slowly improving.

It is possible to set up Windows to be able to use either Parallels or
BootCamp. In that case, you use Parallels for most things because it is
convenient, and boot the same copy of Windows with BootCamp when you
absolutely need the full performance and are willing to put up with the
reboot. I think you might be able to do the same thing with VMWare,
though I don't recall for sure.


2) The issue of malware. I know that Mac users are very proud
that they aren't viruses for Mac, but is this really true?

In practice yes. That could change someday in theory. Viruses for the
Mac even exist in labs. But there are zero of them "in the wild". Still,
it makes sense to take normal precautions with any syste, You just don't
have to be paranoid about it on a Mac.

were true, they are a lot of other kind of malware that they are not
viruses, but that they can do a lot of damage, and that they are
platform independent. Among them are spyware, bad cookies, faked web
pages, phishing attacks, etc. Which kind of product is recommended to
protect the user against these dangers?

For some of them, the only protection is your common sense and caution.
That is particularly true of things like phishing attacks and other scam
emails. They "attack" via the human sitting at the computer - not via
the operating system. There are some tools that can help by warning you
of suspicious signs, but none of those tools replace the most important
one, which is on your shoulders.

3) Does the Mac OS have an inbound personal firewall included, or
the user should buy one from a third party?

One is included. Still, my personal recommendation is to put *ANY*
personal system behind a hardware firewall/router in a separate box.
They are pretty cheap these days. You can get a cheap one for... I
haven't checked, but I bet under $50, and for around $100 you can get
one with lots of other convenience features. In addition to the extra
security, you'll want a router anyway if you do any kind of home
networking. or example, you say you are looking at a MacBook Pro. (Well,
you said PowerBook Pro, but there is no such thing, so I'm guessing you
mean a MacBook Pro). That probably means there wil be times when you
find it handy to have a wireless router.

There is also a 3rd party product called "Little Snitch", which I find
handy. It does something that most firewalls don't. It catches programs
on your computer that try to call out, and allows you to control whether
they can do that or not. Some programs that do that are perfectly legit
things that you want to allow. Others are "legit" in a sense, but things
that you might decide not to allow - programs that you have bought, but
that send more information to the vendor than you might prefer. And
then, of course, if you do get any Malware, there's that.

--
Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
.