dual-boot

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week people wrote in with questions on external hard drives appearing as read-only, Apple's USB modem not working after upgrading to OS X Lion, whether triple-booting OS X and Windows will work properly, and Safari's menu bar disappearing after zooming the window. We welcome alternative approaches and views from readers, so if you have any suggestions, post them in the comments!

Question: External hard drive appearing as read-only MacFixIt reader Orlando asks:

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers. This week readers wrote in asking numerous questions about OS X Lion, including ways to set up dual-boot environments, options for clean installs, whether or not Rosetta could be hacked to work, and options for re-downloading the Lion installer either for different Macs or for creating a boot DVD after you have already installed Lion. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the … Read more

The features and advancements in OS X Lion may make it an enticing installation; however, as has been mentioned previously, Apple is doing away with a few key features that have maintained compatibility with some popular applications. Some of these features, such as the lack of Java, can be remedied by installing support for them, but there is no workaround for others like Rosetta and support for 32-bit system extensions in the default 64-bit boot environment. And a number of (perhaps mostly relatively obscure) applications may have trouble running, as can be seen on the RoaringApps Lion compatibility database. As … Read more

Windows 7 has done wonders for Microsoft's reputation, which was seriously tarnished by the ice cold reception that greeted Vista, Windows 7's predecessor. That's the conclusion of the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index, which is compiled annually by the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business, the American Society for Quality, and the CFI Group.

According the ACSI results released Tuesday, Microsoft's customer satisfaction score jumped 8.9 percent in the past year to 76 (on the survey's 100-point scale). That's higher than Microsoft has scored on the survey in the last … Read more

Apple's Boot Camp utility has made installing Windows on your Mac in a dual-boot environment a very streamlined process. With just a few clicks you can use the Boot Camp assistant to partition and format your drive for use with Windows, and then install Windows onto the ready partition. Apple also supplies drivers with Boot Camp so various Apple hardware will work in that environment.… Read more

If you are waiting to install Windows 7 on your MacBook Pro, the wait is over. Apple recently released Boot Camp 3.1, a set of software drivers that provides official support for running Windows 7 on a Mac. I have used Windows on a MacBook Pro ever since Boot Camp 2.1, and here are my impressions of running Windows 7 64-bit with Boot Camp 3.1.

First of all, you will still need Mac OS X, at least at first, to install Windows 7. For Boot Camp 3.1 to work properly on certain Macs, it's necessary … Read more

It didn't take long after installing Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 7.10 version of Linux for me to decide I liked what I saw. A quick tour of the Applications, Places, and System menus indicated that converting from Windows to Linux would be relatively seemless. The only fly in the ointment was my inability to get any of three wireless adapters to work with the OS.

World-class applications without paying a dime I expected to find the Mozilla Firefox browser bundled with Ubuntu, and seeing links on the Applications*Office menu to OpenOffice.org's Database, Presentation, Spreadsheet, and … Read more

Running Linux from a CD in Windows doesn't get you much closer to computing in a Windows-less world. To make Windows and Linux and either-or proposition, you have to set your PC to dual-boot. With Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 7.10, a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon, the repartitioning is done for you during installation.

Before you install Ubuntu, create a full system backup. Creating a system restore point may not be sufficient, because a misstep during installation could render Windows unbootable. Make sure that you've got your restore CD/DVD handy, and that your system is set to … Read more

This is the year I kiss Windows good-bye. Well, maybe not entirely, but the writing is on the wall for Microsoft's flagship operating system, and all other desktop bloatware: The future of PC software is open source. (I'll add that the future of PC applications is on the Web, which I'll cover once we've got Ubuntu in place.)

Being the belts-and-suspenders type, I'll make the conversion from proprietary to open in baby steps, the first of which is to get a copy of Ubuntu 7.1 (a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon), the version of Linux … Read more