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Potential Mac Switcher -advice?
I switched to a Mac Pro three years ago and with Tiger it was Great, with Leopard it slowly gums up with crud and I have to keep doing a reinstall from scratch. I tried Snow Leopard upgrade but the same "permission" problem is still there. Will have to do a completely formatted new install of the system -- again. Lots of users are having problems with Snow Leopard, by the way.
That was basically why I switched from Windows. It sounds as though Win7 might have improved things? I have an old laptop with XP2 that I use on rare occasions, but am pretty much out of touch.
I am ready to buy a new machine and am seriously considering going back to Windows. Actually I started with Dos -- really dating myself.
When I switched to the Mac there was a forum to help; Is there any forum aimed specifically for those who switch to Windows?
Maybe you can help me with some answers:
1. The Mac Pro interiors are clean and easy to swap out drives, add ram and cards. No tangle of cords. I don't suppose the Windows PCs have improved that way?
2. I read that only with Win 7 Pro, can you get older XP programs to run. But does that mean limiting some of the function or power of Win 7?
3. The restore feature never seemed to work. The old Roxio "Go Back" was a lot more helpful for me. Is the new restore better? I used Acronis and was able to restore my drive with that, but wonder if the OS restore has improved.
4. On the Mac I had all four hard drive slots filled (interior) and always had an interior clone in case I had a problem. Could boot up into the clone and work on the original from there. (I couldn't get into it at all after an update on my original system drive, which is why I took it to the Genius Bar. Don't know why they did an archive reinstall of my clone. That messed it up and was about the last straw.
Sort of dual boot, but the second boot drive is the clone. It just works faster than restoring and allowed me to finish what I was working on before taking care of the problem on the original. My question here is if that is something possible in Win 7?
5. Speaking of hard drives, I have a dozen of varying sizes. Four inside the computer. I keep my data off the boot drive. I don't use raid, but work with files on one data drive and then sync to the other. Several are exterior drives and several more are bare drives in exterior cases. I work with thousands of photos and since losing a years worth of work to a bad zip drive and two corrupted backups, I am paranoid and keep several backups on site and off site and the one inside the computer.
Now finally to the question: They are all formatted with the Mac guid system. It seems to me that once I tried to reformat for Windows and neither the Mac nor the old XP laptop would do it. I bought a program to use in Windows to read the Mac disks, but would hate to rely on that as a permanent solution. Has anyone been able to reformat a Mac drive for Windows? Is there any third party software that will do that?
6. Last question: are there many programs that won't run in the 64 bit mode? Is a reboot necessary to switch from 64 to 36 bits?
Sorry this has been long winded. Hope you can help with some of the questions anyhow. I've just started looking into it and have a feeling more questions will come up. (which is why a forum for switchers to Windows would be great!)
Thanks!