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Fujitsu's Loox P70S, T70S, and T70S/V ultra-portable PCs
So what do you do to followup the launch of both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc machines? Drop a couple of ultra-portables into the mix, naturally. No, not ultra-mobile PCs, Fujitsu's talkin' ultra-portable with their latest P70S (pictured), T70S and T70S/V line-up. First up, the P70S which pumps an Intel Pentium M753 (1.20GHz) processor to drive XP Tablet PC Edition on that 8.9-inch display. Rounding out the specs is a 30GB disk, 512MB of RAM in lightweight 990g (2.18-pound) package. The T70S, meanwhile, foregoes the touchscreen but brings a bit more power to the show with a Pentium M773 (1.30GHz) CPU, 512MB RAM, 10.6-inch 1280 x 768 screen, DVD-burner, 60GB disk, and Intel 915GMS video card. The T70S/V then gives the same specs but throws in an external digital (DMB we think) TV tuner for Japan. All-in-all, just a modest bump in specs from what they delivered last year in the T70K/T models. Picture of the T70S/V after the break.
A Weekend with an XP iMac
This weekend, I conducted a little experiment. I used Boot Camp to boot my 17-inch 1.83GHz iMac Core Duo with 2GBs of RAM and an external 24-inch monitor in Windows XP and then I forced myself to remain in XP. I didn't reboot into OS X. Instead, I explored the Windows performance on the machine. Overall, I have to admit, it was a positive experience. I still prefer OS X, but I can now see the advantages to booting into XP from time to time. One odd thing that I wasn't expecting was that I didn't find myself loathing Windows quite as much. Something about running it quickly on my nice iMac made it more pleasant than all of my previous experiences running XP on various PC boxes. It's still the fastest I've ever seen Windows perform. Half of this is probably that I didn't load it down with lots of crap programs, and I had it properly protected immediately after install with virus, firewall, and spyware protection. There were negative aspects to the experience. It hard crashed at least 5 times on me this weekend. This mostly happened when I was installing something... More after the jump...
Vista successfully installed on a Mac
It was only a matter of time, but hey, for those closely monitoring the progress of Windows on Macs, it looks like peeps on the OSx86 Project forums have fully done the deed with Vista on an iMac. We're not going to get into the nitty gritty right here and now, but it sounds like the trick is to get Vista to stop trying to kill the OS X partition when installing with Boot Camp -- an urge in the installer that seems to be kept at bay by taking out the 200MB EFI partition. But if you're the type of person how wants to go for the gold and not just read about this stuff (which you probably are if you've gotten this far), we suggest actually looking into this a little further before knocking around partitions on your Mac just to get a beta Microsoft operating system up and running, mkay?[Thanks, Mike and Jon]
Now that you've turned your Mac into a PC, turn it into a Mac again
So you've done the formerly impossible and unnecessary: installed Winders on a Mac. Cool, best of both worlds. But there you are, staring at that awful primary color, jumbo crayon, sickly plasticky XP theme. Yeah, you could use one of the many mods featured on Download Squad (please, feel free). Or you could turn your XP rig back into a Mac. At least, you can make XP look a lot more like a Mac. Engadget did this nearly 2 years ago, although Aqua-Soft is still updating their content. Or why not go old school with an OS 9 flavor? Ah, that's better.
TUAW Poll results: Will you dual-boot your Mac?
Many of our informal polls produce fairly even results. Not so with this one. Of the 5,228 of you who responded to the question, "Will you dual-boot your Mac," a full 50% (2,593) of you said, "absolutely." Twenty three percent of you stated that you have no need to do this and fourteen percent said they'd do it just to see it work. Finally, 681 of you (13%), thought the idea was pure blasphemy.Personally, I'd do it just to see it work, but I immediately thought of the financial department at my day job when this news broke. We use nothing but Macs where I work, except for the finance department. They use a proprietary piece of software that is (and will stay) Windows only. So, the person who does payroll must keep both a Mac and a PC on her desk so she can use the payroll software just once every two weeks. A dual-boot Mac seems custom-made for her situation. I'm sure similar scenarios could be found all over the country. Add to that the number of potential new customers who are considering Macs for the very first time, based on Boot Camp's introduction, and we could have a hardware war on our hands.
Parallels provides XP-on-Mac in virtual machine
While it probably won't get nearly as much hype as Apple's Boot Camp, the new beta of Parallels Workstation could actually prove to be more useful for Mac owners than the Apple boot manager. Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta for Mac OS X creates a virtual machine on an Intel-based Mac, allowing the owner to install any guest OS compiled for X86, including Windows XP, Linux or MS-DOS (hey, why not?). This could allow Mac users who need to run an occasional Windows app to do so without having to reboot first -- though they'll need enough RAM and processing power to run both OS X and the virtual machine simultaneously. While other apps, including Microsoft's Virtual PC, have offered similar functionality for Power PC Macs, they required processor emulation, seriously undermining performance. By contrast, Parallels Workstation (available as a free beta) is said to provide "near native" performance, which might be enough for users who need to run Visio, Project, or one of the many other Windows-only productivity apps -- though gamers will probably still want to use Boot Camp and keep just one OS running at a time.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
TUAW Poll: Will you dual-boot your Mac?
Now that it's easier than ever, will you dual-boot your Mac? By the time Leopard is available, this will be a piece of cake (can you imagine hopping from OS to OS as easily as Fast User Switching? A guy can dream). I know that it all depends on things like compatibility, ease etc. But all things being equal: What's your decision? Cast your vote in our poll below and check back tomorrow for the results.
