Hi Sadam, As I see it, the main reason to get a Mac is OS X. Yes, you can get a PC and save money, but Apple does design a superb combo of hardware and software, and if you get a Mac, you can use it regardless of whether or not you get Windows. You also get a nice, accessible safety net environment to use, and it’s easier to work with OS X on Mac hardware than on any other platform even if you later choose to use OS X as your secondary OS. But it’s ultimately up to you.
If you’re sticking with your Mac, then your options are virtualisation with VMWare Fusion or BootCamp. Virtualisation works for most light applications and is fairly easy to do, and BootCamp gives you full performance but requires you reboot into Windows to use it. Office, at least, would be fine in a virtual machine. Although Apple hardware’s relationship with Windows can best be described as temperamental cordiality, it does work very well. Like others have said here, that MacBook that you have is really quite splendid and doesn’t yet need replacement, although as with all current Retina Macs it will be continuing without further upgrades until it reaches EOL. While fiddly, nothing prevents you installing Windows on it and using it exclusively as a Windows box, and it might be your only option when Apple stops supporting OS X on your machine. If you are planning on this route now, let us know and I can outline the procedure. In this way you will not lose your investment in hardware and will probably get the best experience possible for Windows. Win win. Some would say I was irrational, but I’d think that option was preferable even if I stop using OS X altogether, because Apple hardware (especially notebooks) is really very good, and a long-term investment, regardless of its quirks. For myself, my MacBook Pro 2014 is now running Windows 8.1 exclusively, and I’m quite enjoying it. Although using Windows reminds me painfully of why I switched to Mac in the first place, with all that configuring and tweaking it needs just to be useful, it does work, and it shines with a powerful light. It’s too soon to convert my iMac, but I think Apple ultimately made the best compromise in BootCamp for modern versions of Windows. Modern Windows is very large, has good hardware support, delivers good speeds, and is difficult to back up from outside Windows itself, so putting it in a partition and booting it is really a good idea. The worst part about BootCamp is getting the bugger installed. But there’s a preinstallation environment with NVDA that talks for getting the installation going, and if you know what you’re doing, you can use it to partition and install a dual-boot Windows install. This I will be doing with my iMac once I have established what software I will be using in Windows. Oh, and yes, browsing the web actually works in Windows. :) So, in summary, if you have determined that the majority or most common of your OS X apps are not meeting your needs, you probably want BootCamp. But, if you like OS X and simply want a nice insulated Windows environment, you can use virtualisation to get access to just those apps, like Office. Cheers, Sabahattin -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
