TUAW Poll results: Will you dual-boot your Mac?

Many of our informal polls produce fairly even results. Not so with this one. Of the 5,228 of you who responded to the question, "Will you dual-boot your Mac," a full 50% (2,593) of you said, "absolutely." Twenty three percent of you stated that you have no need to do this and fourteen percent said they'd do it just to see it work. Finally, 681 of you (13%), thought the idea was pure blasphemy.

Personally, I'd do it just to see it work, but I immediately thought of the financial department at my day job when this news broke. We use nothing but Macs where I work, except for the finance department. They use a proprietary piece of software that is (and will stay) Windows only. So, the person who does payroll must keep both a Mac and a PC on her desk so she can use the payroll software just once every two weeks. A dual-boot Mac seems custom-made for her situation. I'm sure similar scenarios could be found all over the country. Add to that the number of potential new customers who are considering Macs for the very first time, based on Boot Camp's introduction, and we could have a hardware war on our hands.

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Source: http://www.tuaw.com/2006/04/05/tuaw-poll-will-you-dual-boot-…

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Analysis / Opinion Apple Corporate OS Software

Many of our informal polls produce fairly even results. Not so with this one. Of the 5,228 of you who responded to the question, "Will...

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Mark

Well, if anything it's fun to do then show to die-hard Apple fanatics. They look at you like you're crazy, even if you explain that you'd rather run Adobe's CS2 apps at full-speed in Windows instead of wait until CS3 comes out in Universal. Admittedly he didn't know the difference between the cpu architectures so I'm sure it didn't make much sense as to why I prefered Windows for CS2...

At the same time someone who does a lot of web work and prefered Windows was intrigued by it, he seemed to already like some OS X features but prefered to work on Flash in Windows, I think I gave him some food for thought with it. That and when I mentioned it played games great I think it added a nice frosting to the cake.

April 06 2006 at 7:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Clark

So people buy Apple for the hardware and not the OS? Other than the geek factor I have no reason to run windows on my Mac.

April 06 2006 at 7:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

If_I_Must

Another line needs to be added and a re-vote:

Rather Virtualize WinXP, Linux, etc.

Thanks

April 06 2006 at 7:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

glad

Enough already or are you changing the name to TUWW (work it out!). Better still set up a seperate weblog for those mac/win blasphemers.

April 06 2006 at 6:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve Royal

Why dosn't Apple Computers buy Apple Corps.?

April 06 2006 at 6:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jimmie

I just did it.

http://gadgetsonthego.net/2006/04/just-installed-xp-on-my-imac.html

April 06 2006 at 6:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Fritz Laurel

This poll is worthless, IMHO, because it doesn't take into account the number of people who want to run Windows as a virtual machine.

I, for example, would never dual-boot, so the only choice for me is either "I have no need" or "You blasphemers!" which implies that I don't want to run Windows. Neither of these choices reflects my true position.

A more useful poll (if not dryer and with less pizazz) would be, perhaps:

Would you run Windows on your Intel Mac?
Yes, I desire a dual-boot solution.
Yes, I desire a virtual machine solution.
Yes, I desire both dual-boot and virtual solutions.
No.

Cheers,
FL