“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!
I’ve never lost data on a Windows machine, but before getting my MBP I watched my Dell desktop (circa. 2001) become infested with virus after virus. It seemed there was no A/V update that would stop the inevitable take down of an 18gb machine. At its worst booting up the machine would take upwards of ten minutes. At its best booting up the machine would take upwards of ten minutes.
Myself? No… Friends and family, abso-freakin-lutely!!
When I use to work in IT, if somebody’s computer came down with a bad virus we’d just wipe the machine. So in effect, yes. I know people who’ve lost data to viruses.
Yes, Back when I was new to computers. Not so long ago. I had my documents on the same partition as windows and when a virus screwed up some boot files. I had to wipe and reinstall and lost all my files.
I lost a full hard drive over the course of a few months in ’99. I was new to public file sharing and using scour.net quite a bit. No virus protection at all. Next computer someone recommended AVG and I went that route until I made the switch. So far so good on OSX!
OK I already won the other Parallels from day 4 but I love commenting anyway…
My brother, who refuses to drink the proverbial Apple flavored Kool-Aid that I so love despite all of my best efforts to convert him, once had a Wind-BLOWS machine (not sure of which version he had) that he had to “Take-In” twice within 6 weeks because of viruses. They actually installed 2 different hard drives to get rid of each virus and it cost him about as much as a new computer would have. He had all the latest Anti-Virus Software but they still decimated his P.O.S. They say there is an “Apple Tax” but how many people actually spend “Buckets-O-Duckets” (that’s large amounts of cash) repairing their PC’s when they go bad? So there, How bout them Apples? (pun intended)
Yep, made my old pc un-bootable and restoring windows onto the hard drive made things even worse.
Back in my day-trading days, my Dell caught a virus that would cause every stock I bought to go down. Yeah, that’s it. I’m sure that was reason.
No
My friend had to wipe clean his HDD…thus losing all his data!
Just 3 weeks ago, a virus caused my wife’s PC’s HD to fry, causing a major file loss (in the amount of 320GB)…
Damn windows viruses. Damn them to hell! (so they can be close to Bill Gates)
A Virus screwed up my Dad’s hard drive.
Due to a complete re-install of the WinXP OS, we did lose many applications and some files
Multiple times in different machines… and had anti-virus installed 😛
No, i’ve never lost data through a Windows Virus but I had a lot of trouble with Viruses. On my Atari ST many disks where killed by a Virus, without internet, only by infected Disks.
Not only have I lost data to a virus, after an update my anti-virus software once mistakenly thought the contents of my documents folder was a virus and deleted it. Another update was issued a few hours later to fix this “issue” but that was the last time I bought anything Windows related.
Viruses, Trojans, Malware, Spyware – I wonder if MS gets residuals for leaving holes open in Software. I switched to Mac before the big internet boom – so I’ve not had problems on my personal computers – but I’ve rebuilt plenty of PC’s…
Hard drive crash yes, virus not yet…
Haven’t lost any data. Nor to my knowledge has anyone I know. A few friends have got their systems so gunked up that I’ve had to do a reformat and reinstall of their Windows OS.
I used to have a collection of the various Windows trojans that I’d get over my work’s email (might still have it somewhere, I should check.) Periodically, our IT guy would give my dept. crap for using Macs, and I’d break out that folder. It pretty much shut him up (doubtless because he was worrying about how many of them he’d be dealing with shortly.)
Bizarre to relate that story in a contest where the prize is enabling Windows on my Mac, but there you go.
Absolutely. Especially if you consider “data loss” as being forced to look at pop-up ads for porn and viagra and–the pinnacle in irony–spam-protection software.
My dad does all the time. he is 67 and no matter how much i teach him, he still does not practice safe surfing.
Friends of mine lost work and material from a simple virus infection!!!! Thank god I’ m safe!!!!! Thank you apple!!!!
Viruses haven’t lost me any data, just time… though I did once have a floppy disk drive explode in a ball of fire on me.
my family always gets virus’s, my uncle in particular
yes twice, once was i 1998 i think CHI or CIH…
and the other time was 2002 SARS or S… something like that made my machine restart so mach that hdd gone…
Yep myself and just about everyone I know. Busy cleaning up that new nasty christmas card one at work now
Yes
Indeed… I got my slow beige box infected with the Vundo trojan a few years back… Even after removing the damned trojan, the PC wound up getting reformatted.
My friend lost all data to a virus. Had to wipe it clean and reinstall.
My inlaws just had a virus wipe out their PC right before Christmas in 2009. Good thing Santa brought them a MacBook to solve all of their problems!
ROFLMAO no joke but my Dell just got the BSOD and im typing this with my new toshiba lol.
So ya I experianced a data loss of everything
My girlfriend lost everything due to a virus and had to reinstall everything.
I don’t really hang out with those sorts of folks. No.
My in-laws PC turned into a brick with all the mal-ware on it.
Blue screened on my Parallels instance at work, not more than an hour ago…
Back when I used a Windows machine, my girlfriend would visit and check her email … well, she wasn’t too particular about what files she downloaded and ran. So you can imagine my surprise when one day I found that she had not only downloaded a trojan to my computer, but that the trojan had grabbed my passwords and sent them back to some malcontent.
And that’s how my UNIX account at work got wiped out. By a Windows trojan.
yay for me!
These day, I’m much, much more cautious. And I own a Mac.
I’ve know a few people who lost data due to PC viruses. Very sad.
never lost data but have had computers crash on vista… 🙁
No
When I had my Windows Laptop and it crashed I lost everything on it. Mainly because I am way to lazy to try and get on it to get the data out of the hard drive. That was my last Winsows based item ever
Have lost several traveling salepersons data on laptops through out the year
I have had hard disc havoc due to viruses at least 2 times.
I’ve never had a Windows box, but a couple of my friends have had serious virus problems.
The first time I got connected to the internet in ’02 I used the free ISP, Juno, which ultimately lead to getting a virus on my Win98 machine and deleted the TOC and some random system files. It was the most frustrating Windows viruses I’ve ever gotten because at the time I had no idea how to get the data back for all the lost pictures and current school projects. It was the first time I had to learn data recovery from a hard drive – a skill that comes in handy (and has gotten easier) over the years. I now work on a Macbook.
Sure, my little sister has, and my boss’ wife, as well.
I don’t recall ever losing data on a Windows machine due to virus but the thing that always bothered me most was the build-up of adware/spyware/junk and what have you that slowed down the whole system and generally rendered the computer unusable. (By unusable I mean so frustrating to use I would rather toss it into a wood chipper with my hands still on the keyboard than wait 57mins for it to load Explorer).
Nope, guess i’m lucky
I have a friend who got a virus … I don’t know which one … but he lost all the data from de C partition … he is still using Windows … I told him next time I won’t help him … he could buy a Mac and be safe … but no … he is still stuck on Windows 🙁
Our office had some horrible Outlook outbreak years and years ago but I was spared.
My grandma lost all her data three times I think lol