I think that XP is the best choice.

Originally Posted by whym

Limited software is an issue, but there is now quite a lot of useful software out there for Macs that do the job just as well as on a PC (if not better). There are almost 0 viruses in the wild for Mac, compared to over 100,000 known threats for Windows. This is probably because of the much smaller market share that Apple Mac has.

SQL Server can't be run in Mac land, and plenty of other frankly necessary applications. But Mac hardware can run Windows itself now, so they're taken significant steps to improve the situation.

There are far more than 0 Mac viruses, but this belief is why, when somebody packages one well, it will bring devastation. In Windows, honestly, 99 % of people who get computer viruses are toothless and barefoot. We know there are viruses, we run anti virus software, we make backups - Mac people are in a pretend Happy Land thinking none of this applies to them. So when a virus is distributed in a way that it spreads to the general public, while Windows users practice care, Mac people will be left out in the cold.

In Windows, a user at least has to execute the virus code. Looking at some viruses that have successfully spread infections and targeted Mac specificially, it looks like that isn't the case. Mac viruses seem able to infect your computer simply by the data being there, as if the operating system runs all code on the disc or something?

Also mp3 and jpg files seem enough to deploy malicious code on a Mac operating system.

There are already a number of Mac viruses that do small scale damage - enough to make a site about them, even if they don't keep it remotely up to date. Here are a few examples.



WDEF

The WDEF virus, first found in Belgium in 1989, gets its name from the WDEF resource found in the Desktop file. Its two strains, WDEF A and B, spread by infecting these files, and, since the System reads the Desktop files of every disk it mounts, can spread very easily, without even needing applications to run.
It does not do any intentional damage, by some of its programming errors can cause problems, such as crashes, and font display problems.

ZUC

The ZUC virus was first found in 1990, and is named after its discoverer, Don Ernesto Zucchini. There are three strains of this virus, ZUC A, B and C. They infect applications only, and can spread even if the applications are not run. They cause erratic cursor behavior, but do no other damage.

SevenDust

There are several strains of the SevenDust virus, called A through G, and this virus is also known as MDEF 9806 and MDEF 666. These viruses spread through MDEF, MENU or WIND resources, and an extension. SevenDust E, also known as Graphics Accelerator, originated in a Trojan horse in 1998.

This family of viruses can infect applications, the System file, and control panels. They attempt to delete all files which are not applications on the startup volume when the computer is running between 6 and 7 am on the 6th and 12th day of any month.

The SevenDust F strain was spread through a Trojan horse called ExtensionConflict, and this strain has five sub-strains, that spread through other extensions.

Leap A

The virus, named OSX/Leap-A (also known as OSX/Oompa-A) spreads via instant messaging systems. The OSX/Leap-A worm spreads via the iChat instant messaging system, forwarding itself as a file called latestpics.tgz to contacts on the infected users' buddy list. When the latestpics.tgz archive file is opened on a computer it disguises its contents with a JPEG graphic icon in an attempt to fool people into thinking it is harmless.

So far this year

Cybercriminals targeted Mac and PC users in equal measure, by planting poisoned adverts on TV-related websites. If accessed via an Apple Mac, surfers would be attacked by a piece of Macintosh scareware called MacSweeper.

2007

Malware tries to change DNS server settings on Apple Macintosh computers

Sophos customers are protected against a newly discovered Trojan horse that targets users of the Apple Mac OS X platform.


The Trojan horse poses as a codec to help users view pornographic videos, but in fact changes DNS server entries to direct surfers unwittingly to other websites. This could be for the purposes of phishing, identity theft or simply to drive traffic to alternative websites.

Much, much worse

The Renepo script worm attempted to disable Mac OS X security, downloaded hacking tools to affected computers, and gave criminals admin rights to the Apple Macintosh. Hackers also wrote a proof-of-concept program called Amphimix which demonstrated how executable code could be disguised as an MP3 music file on an Apple Mac

i would recommend ubuntu but since it`s not one of your choices xp is the one

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

SQL Server can't be run in Mac land, and plenty of other frankly necessary applications. But Mac hardware can run Windows itself now, so they're taken significant steps to improve the situation.

I'm assuming you're reffering to MS SQL Server. Why in the hell would anybody want to run MSSQL for anything? My Mac came prebundled with MySQL and unless you're running a fortune 500, that's everything you need. What other necessary applications can the Mac not run? Please, name 1. Or since you said plenty, then name several. I'll be waiting......

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

There are far more than 0 Mac viruses

I think in the past year there have been 3.....Yes, not 0... but 3. All three of them required direct user action. You either had to run an executable or install a tainted codec being distributed by porn sites.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

In Windows, honestly, 99 % of people who get computer viruses are toothless and barefoot.

I'm sure automechanics feel the same way about most people who own cars. That is also an obvious exageration. I know and work with plenty of very intelligent people who simply don't feel like managing Windows Updates, Anti-Virus updates and defintions, 2 anti-spyware apps + definitions, firewall settings, etc... etc... The computer is supposed to just work. You shouldn't need all of these addons.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Mac viruses seem able to infect your computer simply by the data being there, as if the operating system runs all code on the disc or something?

Making broad generalizations without knowledge or fact sure help you make your point, don't they? We'll do this wikipedia style and place a "citation needed" next to this one. Mac actually requires additional user intervention the first time any executable is run with any privelage that real virus would need. A GUI implementation of SUDO if you're familiar with *nix. By default all users (even an admin) does not have root privelage in the GUI. You have to specifically grant root privelage to every piece of executable code that you run. You also have to specifically tell code to run, if you want it to run. As far as your examples like the codes and disguised MP3, they took advantage of buffer overflows in a couple of Mac applications. If you'd like, I'm sure I could find hundreds of similar cases of the same thing happening in Windows.


Now, how many hours have you spent working on a Mac? How complete is your knowledge? If you've never touched an OS X based Mac, then you should really try it before you blindly believe everything you hear.

As I stated before, I'm a Windows Sys Admin for a living. I know it backwards and forwards. I know every strength and weakness of Windows. That's why I use a Mac. If I didn't have a Mac, I'd probably use Ubuntu. The only thing that Windows is any good for is gaming. It pretty much fails at everything else.

I am happy with XP. I dont need anything else from it.

I have a laptop with windows vista. With 2GB of ram they works very good.
When i chage my previous laptop with Windows XP, i think about MAC, but i buy an HP Pavilion with windows vista, because i need it to work. My work is the software development and all the tools i need is in Windows. I work with a mac some time ago, is excellent, is beautiful, but i have to continues use Windows
I know (but i dont test) that the Windows XP works in a MAC hardware. Maybe, with the two systems in the MAC machine i can work
The ideal is to have to laptops, but depend on your wallet

mac all the way. I have yet to find something I cannot do on a mac that I could do on a windows.

Originally Posted by carloncho

I have a laptop with windows vista. With 2GB of ram they works very good.
When i chage my previous laptop with Windows XP, i think about MAC, but i buy an HP Pavilion with windows vista, because i need it to work. My work is the software development and all the tools i need is in Windows. I work with a mac some time ago, is excellent, is beautiful, but i have to continues use Windows
I know (but i dont test) that the Windows XP works in a MAC hardware. Maybe, with the two systems in the MAC machine i can work
The ideal is to have to laptops, but depend on your wallet

You can very easily run Windows XP or Windows Vista on the Mac. If you want full functionality, you can use bootcamp to run a dual-boot (or more) system with both windows and OS X installed.

If you want to be able to access Windows while booted into your Mac, you can check out Parallels. It allows you to run Windows in a virtual machine. Parallels works well for everything except gaming (but you will need a copy that you can legally activate for this, and corporate copies seem to have issues).

On a side note, when Vista was first released, PC World (or maybe it was maximum pc) did a benchmark with about a dozen different laptops to see which one ran Vista best. Just for the humor value, they included a Macbook Pro with a bootcamp install of Vista. It won the test

Originally Posted by mork29

Just for the humor value, they included a Macbook Pro with a bootcamp install of Vista. It won the test

Lol...that's the first I've heard about that test, but I can definitely believe it. One of my friends just purchased a new Vista laptop that has great specs. While it is fast enough that it will do the jobs they want to do with it, it's definitely a lot slower than my MacBook Pro.

Originally Posted by mork29

I'm assuming you're reffering to MS SQL Server. Why in the hell would anybody want to run MSSQL for anything?

I dunno. Maybe they need a database. You know, stored procedures, declarative referential integrity, you know, a database. Only a religious extremist would ever compare the two. SQL Server is like a cargo jet, and MySQL by comparison is like a paper airplane with both wings on fire. But you made your point - something about you can find Mac software with 3 of the same letters.

Originally Posted by mork29

My Mac came prebundled with MySQL and unless you're running a fortune 500, that's everything you need.

The classic Mac apologist stance - "If my Mac can't do it, it doesn't need to be done!"

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

The classic Mac apologist stance - "If my Mac can't do it, it doesn't need to be done!"

My point was that very few people need to do it, Mac or not. I didn't know we were dicussing high end server architectures here, I thought we were talking about what you run in your house. If you need an enterprise database and your running it on Vista your a fool. MS has a whole nother operating system for your server needs. If you need to develop for an enterprise level database on your Mac, you can do that easily.

Oracle client tools run on the Mac

Sybase Enterprise Tools run on the Mac:
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2002/05/08.10.shtml

Why would anybody need to run MS SQL on their DESKTOP is my real question.

Also, you're spreading a few lies. MySQL now has full support for Triggers, stored procedures and foreign keys in 5.x Also, if you want to start comparing performance (even in a large scale deployment) MS SQL can't stand up to MySQL. Oh, and MySQL is free and open source.... I kind of like that in my software.....

When I say a Mac can do anything, I mean that in general terms. Of course Mac can't run MS SQL, because it's proprietary software that MS obviously isn't going to port away from Windows. I'm saying that you can achieve the same results with equivalant software. If you're going to fault Macs for not running MS SQL then why can't Windows run Keynote? or any of the iLife suite? I mean, Macs can run MS Office, so why can't windows run iLife?

Originally Posted by mork29

My point was that very few people need to do it, Mac or not.

Specifically, you said there are only 500 institutions on the face of the Earth that need SQL Server. Presumably they don't need it because it's superior - logic I'll never understand.

Originally Posted by mork29

Why would anybody need to run MS SQL on their DESKTOP is my real question.

And you claim to work in IT??? Anyway, you've effectively managed to back peddle from "There's no software a Mac can't run" to "I don't approve that anyone could want to use software a Mac can't run". I guess dogma trumps functionality, must be some really good kool aid you got.

Originally Posted by mork29

Also, you're spreading a few lies. MySQL now has full support for Triggers, stored procedures and foreign keys in 5.x

In some features, the latest MySQL has caught up to SQL Server 2000.

Originally Posted by mork29

Also, if you want to start comparing performance (even in a large scale deployment) MS SQL can't stand up to MySQL.

LOL. And you have the gall to accuse other people of spreading lies. Yeah. Back to your "only the S&P 500 needs SQL Server" riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. A little consistency in your religious Mac fervor, please, Mr IT guy.

Originally Posted by mork29

When I say a Mac can do anything, I mean that in general terms.

And even in general terms it's not true.

Originally Posted by mork29

I mean, Macs can run MS Office, so why can't windows run iLife?

Because that's not the absurd claim you made. I can understand why you'd want to change the subject when you said something that's been demonstrated to be patently false. What you said and what you're saying now are quite different.

I think basically it just comes down to whatever you are most comfortable with. I switched over from PC to Mac about 3 years ago and I would never go back. My Mac never crashes and it is still a heck of a machine even though it is already 3 years old.
Just make sure to pick a brand that is reliable and has good customer service, as well as a good service plan.

I am a mac loyalist, just make sure that there are no rumors of a new laptop from mac before you buy one or you'll be quite upset afterwards! like many of us have.

go with XP by far, vista is terrible and there are a load of programms that aren't compatible with it, mac is just a crap operating system, plus there are loads of things you can do to xp to make it faster do other things and cool tricks

I run Vista 64 on my desktop and Vista 32 on my laptop. Both are Ultimate versions. I love it. It's better than XP in just about every way. It has it's annoyances but the extra features make up for them imo.