Clarifying my geekiness...

I have received several comments out here in the real world as to my geekiness, especially pertaining to my post of a week or so ago dealing with VT technology and OS's.

I feel I need to clarify exactly WHY I think that stuff is so exciting.

Ask yourself this: Have you ever wanted to do something on your computer and not been allowed because you didn't have the right OS? I believe Mac OS users (whether it be X or prior) probably noted this mostly on the gaming front, but I believe there are also some video capture things etc. that have been out of reach. From my Linux box, my biggest miss from the Windows world was games, games and more games. I've spent a lot of time getting the few games I have working just to work in Linux. And when I ran Windows, I wished it was more secure. I've had to sacrifice my "fun" for security. I feel its a fair trade right now.

Basically, I view a computer as a tool, no, a tool box. It has the tools that we need to be able to use to complete our work, have our fun, or whatever inside of itself. This technology will allow us to consolidate three (or more) toolboxes into one. This probably seems like not much of a big deal to most home users, but to a geek like me, this gives me the option to finally get back to 2 computers (one laptop and one desktop). And it should open up doors to use tools from other OS's for other users. For example, security is tremendously good on the Unix/Linux/BSD side of things. So run your Mac OS X (a derivative of FreeBSD) or Linux box for anything you need secure (work, finances, email, web surfing, etc). But you know that Windows has the best game in the world you're just dying to play. Now you can do both on the same box. Say when you play the game, your Windows machine gets a virus (sonofab*tch!!). Well, your Windows machine is actually a file on your computer. You backed it up a few days ago before the virus. Overwrite your virus ridden machine with a copy of the backed up version. Poof! You're good to go again, full bore, no virus (Yayyyy!!!!) Maybe 5 minutes of game play lost. No screwing with trying to "kill" the virus. No reloading the entire OS and all the pieces of software. Now, you have to get back to that paper/report/design that's due next week. Okay, "close" your windows box. Open your Mac box/Linux box (another tab/button on the screen). Poof! You're back to work! No turning the machine off. No extra box/hardware to have laying around. Just a couple of extra clicks on the screen.

There is, of course, one downside...if you want to do this, it will be expensive this first year due to hardware. But there is another cost...you will still have to have a legal copy of Windows (whatever version you prefer) or Mac OS X.

I'll say my piece about that in my next post.