Macenstein

Posted by iGor

The Mac world is abuzz with people scrambling for benchmarks on how well the recently announced “Boot Camp software runs Windows XP on the new Intel Macs. Much of the news is quite favorable. Games like Worlds of Warcraft play faster than their Mac ports, and the iMac Core Duo even runs Windows faster than a Dell XPS 200.

While we think these numbers are all very exciting, we felt most people were missing the point here. People running Windows are not concerned with running games well or seeing how fast one system runs compared to another. Windows users just want to make sure they can run the latest viruses FAST, while still maintaining compatibility with their OLD viruses. To that end, we set out to test just how well viruses perform on the new Intel Macs running Windows XP.

We chose the Nyxem worm as our baseline. As it runs on the 3rd of each month we first had to set our clocks back a couple days, but now that we got it going, we are pleased to announce that this mass mailing worm works great on a Core Duo Mac mini. Nyxem was able to delete many of our Office documents faster than it did on a similarly equipped Gateway.

Likewise, we are pleased to announce that the classic Nimda worm of 2001 performed well, although it DID have some trouble with Service Pack 2’s security measures. But that is not the fault of the Mac mini.

Final Thoughts

Windows users who always wanted the style of a Mac but were afraid they could not run their favorite viruses and Trojans now have reason to rejoice. Right now, the new Intel Macs are the fastest PCs out there for running Windows spyware and malware; from “Ajax� to “ZeroHunt�.