[Leica] OT: 2 questions: computer and Spain

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

> 1.    Anybody on the list running both Windows and OS X on the new Mac's?  
> If so, how do you find it?  Pros and cons?  I'm having to use Windows at 
> work and have Mac's at home and need to make some decisions about a new 
> laptop.

I am. I run XP Professional and OS X on my Mac laptop. It works really well, 
with two exceptions:

1. Devices: access to some USB devices is dicey from XP. It can be done, but 
it's not straightforward. An example of where it is a big nuisance is 
syncing a Palm Pilot. There is a new release of Parallels that I haven't yet 
tried; it might have a fix for this problem.

2. Backups: the Windows disk looks like one giant file in the Mac world, and 
every time you start Windows, even just to look at it, that file changes, 
which means that the entire many-gigabyte file will get backed up. My Mac 
backup program (Retrospect) doesn't know how to look inside the Windows 
virtual disk file and back up only those parts that have changed. This has 
caused me to stop backing up that file, which means that my Windows world is 
not being backed up. Anything that I have in 
Windows that matters I drag to the folder that is shared between Windows and 
Mac OS.