“The 12 Days AFTER Christmas” Giveaway: Day 13 – Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac
This contest is closed. Congrats to faithful Macenstein reader Chad.
On the Thirteeth Day After Christmas, Macenstein gave to you (or, more accurately, gave you a chance to win…) Your very own copy of Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac!
Sure, we all love Apple and the ease of OS X, but sometimes there’s things you just can’t do on a Mac – like run the latest games, business software, and viruses. But who wants to go through all the trouble of partitioning their drive and rebooting into Boot Camp? When you HAVE to use Windows, you want to get in and out QUICK, and there’s nothing quicker than Parallels 5 for Mac. Optimized for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and boasting unmatched virtual machine performance, Parallels 5 lets you launch thousands of Windows apps directly from the Mac Dock. Best of all, Parallels lets you show as much or as little of the Windows interface as you like, so your friends won’t even know you’re running Windows, thus preserving your Mac Street Cred.
Choice is good. Not having to choose is even better.
Mac OS or Windows? Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac lets you seamlessly run Windows and Mac OS X side-by-side, drag-and-drop your files between operating systems, and run Windows software on your Apple computer without rebooting.* Run thousands of Windows programs faster on your Mac
* Enhanced! Install Windows XP, Vista or 7 in 3 easy steps
* Enhanced! Optimized for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
* New! Full support for Aero, including Flip 3D in Windows Vista and 7 & OpenGL 2.1
* New! OpenGL 2.1 support for Linux guest Operating Systems
* Enhanced! Parallels Compressor automatically reclaims hard disk space
* Enhanced! Intel VT-x2 virtualization technology drives maximum performance
* Enhanced! Unmatched virtual machine performance
* Enhanced! KVM paravirtualization for Linux gives unmatched performance
To enter:Among Mac users there is a perception that Windows is… um… somewhat less than secure. But how deserved is that reputation? To enter, leave us a comment telling us have you or anyone you personally know ever lost data to a Windows virus? Winner will be picked randomly 7 days later and notified (kind of like in The Ring, only with less killing… we hope). Open to all readers world-wide. Good luck, and thanks for reading Macenstein! (Oh, and be sure to enter ALL our “12 Days AFTER Christmas” Giveaways!)
Please note: Comments may take a while to show up, please do not double-post. Thanks!
No, but that’s only because I insist on proper backups and anti-malware precautions.
Yep, because windows have an expiry date, and when that date comes. Do yourself a favor and switch to a mac and live happily ever after. 😉
My wife’s computer (still Win XP) had a major crash from a bug. Had to wipe and reinstall everything!
My girlfriend’s old computer, but fortunately none of mine.
No, I have never lost data to a virus….at least not that I know about.
Have experienced several virus infections over the many years with windows.
i have. i lost all my school projects
on windows machine I often hear about friends with poorly knowledge of anti-virus what so ever loss their data…
then there is my friends with mac, they come out fine. nothing is missing unless its have to.
I have many times lost something on the old xp i was working on
I have not personally, but the company I worked for did.
Of course!! Myself back in 1998, I lost almost everything because of a Virus called Windows!
I’ve known people who have to wipe out their hard drives numerous times because of malware and probably a virus or two.
Back in the XP days my hobby was collecting virusses. But never lost any valuable data.
I don’t recall having trouble with data loss back in the windows days. But crashes? Heck yeah. All I remember from my PC era is ctrl-alt-delete.
Of course we use PC at work, but a whole IT departement takes care of the computers, back-up and such. I still have crashes from time to time though 🙂
The CEO of a company I worked for in 2000/2001 opened the “I Love You” virus sent from an infected co-worker’s machine, spreading it to the entire company in seconds. Several machines were infected so badly we had to wipe them and start over, including a couple of corporate web servers.
His explanation was “I saw the subject line from so-and-so and thought ‘Wow this is great, she really must think I’m doing a good job’.”
CEO FAIL.
I have never lost data but I work in the data recovery field so I’m pretty good at getting everything back
If you never had a data loss on you windows machine, respect. before i bought my mbp, i lost about 2 or 3 times data from my hard disk… really sucks…
While staying in London and owning a custom built PC I was stolen three times the credit card details while paying through Internet, after changing to Macbook and OS X never since… fingers crossed.
i got the chernobyl virus on june 23 1999.
i lost ALL my data. the only that my screen shown was “hard disk failure. isert boot disk”
Lost all my data and stuff with the Chernobyl virus is 98. Sucks.
Never lost data, but have definitely had mysterious over-the-net unwanted malware installs that were a bitch to remove.
I know a few people that have lost their data. Latest victim was my sister on her PC laptop for work. This may be her 2nd or 3rd time.
My dad, who works with Microsoft, lost his whole hard drive to a virus one time. That sure was fun to tease him about!!
I worked for a consulting firm years ago and a whole company lost everything because the secretary who was tasked with backups refused to do her job and a virus wiped out their “server” because she was downloading songs on the “server” or as I called it her underpowered PC.
Nope, never. My Windows boxes have been virus free since, well, Windows came out.
I don’t download torrents, warez or other high risk stuff. 😉
I know folks who have had dailers and what not grab their machines, but all those have been quick fixes as well once they noticed that things were happening in the background they didn’t think they had started.
I’ve had Windows Virus’ but never actually lost data
My Gaming PC, which really collects dust now, has picked up a few bugs but I caught them before any damage was done, and this was done very very easily by embedded files on website’s banner adds.
Long ago, the One Half virus didn’t exactly loose all of my data but it did encrypt it all and refuse to give it back.
When I was 12, I got a virus on my computer and I didn’t know how to get rid of it so I threw the computer away. =[
Yes. In high school lost a lab report the night it was due.
Yes, I’ve had several friends and family members lose data to Windows viruses. Usually, however, it’s because they hadn’t taken obvious precautions such as antivirus, firewalls, etc. and didn’t censor what sites they visited. 😉
when i was in college and lost my term paper due the next day!!!
the following semester is when i got my first iMac G5 and the rest as they say is history! lol
No, never
No, but then I NEVER EVER use the Internet for anything other than downloading endless Windows updates, and I’m behind a 4.5m thick layer of routers, elephant hide, and lead plating.
Not that they’ll admit.
I’ve never had an issue because I’ve always stored important files on a different partition. However, I deal with my boss’ son’s computer on a monthly basis for viruses and I know he’s definitely lost some data.
Nope…never lost data.
I’ve never lost any data from a virus, and I can’t think of a time when I knew that someone else lost data from a virus. Most of my family and friends use Macs.
One ‘PC’ on the network had a virus that started spamming, took a week to get off all the blacklists around to send business communications again…. oy!
No. =)
Never lost data due to a virus, but I did lose hours and hours cleaning up corporate systems when Blaster came through a few years back and started causing all our systems to shutdown… That’s when I really started to dislike Windows.
Yes, I lost lots and lots of data to a virus. My sister-in-law transferred a virus from her computer to mine, which I had faithfully kept clean. As soon as the visit was over, I bought a new Mac (which I had always used before, but my husband decided he wanted to do gaming, which he never did). Ridiculous.
I have a friend that was a huge torrent / piratebay / kazaa / rapidshare user. He managed to get his computer so bad, infected with so many viruses that we could not even boot into safe and clean. The only option was to wipe and reinstall OS, it was completely unusable. I don’t know that you can blame that on Windows though, you reap what you sow, and he is much more careful these days.
Jeff
Never personally owned a Windows box. But I have a number of friends lose data to virus outbreaks.
I personally haven’t had virus problems with Windows, but I’ve had a few more-than-frustrating virus removal issues with a couple of relatives’ PCs….funny thing about downloading random ‘free’ games from the internet…
not me, but it’s happened to some friends
I lost ability to send email from my IP after catching Blaster trojan and having my box reconfigured as spam relay, so technically speaking I’ve lost some data: mails does not reach recipients.
But the funniest story about malware on windows is: Once I was the last line of hope as my friend’s managing director had unusual problem. Every time he started up windows IE showed with ‘Hottest teens for you’ page on it. He changed start page, was plugging his laptop to projector after closing teens page and suprisingly just after he connected projector the whole meeting could see hot teen chicks page again. He usually managed it with ‘oh, not again, my son was using my computer!’ 😀
I’ve seen lots of money and time wiped out but not data.
I’ve been working on computers (Mac and PC) for more than 15 years and have dealt with many different kinds of infections. I have never -ever- personally seen or heard of a legitimate case where a virus deleted personal data. I know there are viruses that can affect boot records, but these viruses would not necessarily be platform specific…. and once again, I have never personally seen this virus in the wild. Also, I think you’d have to be visiting some pretty raunchy, nasty porn sites to catch a virus like that.
I was always so careful, back when I used Windows on my PCs. I never lost data to viruses or OS issues because I had good backups and I never clicked on stuff I didn’t know. I rarely left non-music hard/software manufacturer sites. By 2002, I was using Macs all the time.
I do know quite a number of less careful/more unfortunate PC users who have lost gobs of data. Most of them are now Mac users.
I know a friend who lost a lot of her files, mostly school stuff to viruses.