Thanks, dayglored. At least now I know something about my new computer.
I want a copy of Street Atlas but I need Boot Camp to get it. Doubt that’s possible because I suspect you need two processors and I only have one.
No prob'.
Something else: you mentioned "OSX 10.5.3". Here's how that works:
Mac OS started in 1984 with version 1 and went all the way through version Mac OS 9.2 (as I recall), based on that older operating model.
Then Apple made a huge change, completely rewrote Mac OS, and used Unix (arguably the most robust, stable, and long-lived (38 years!) commercial operating system), as the basis for the new release of Mac OS.
Apple used "X" for the name, hence "Mac OS X". The official versioning is "10.major.minor" because they're not going to go to "11" any time soon. So the "major" releases are 10.1, 10.2, and so on, instead of 10, 11, 12, etc.
Moreover, they named each major release after one of the Big Cats: Panther, Tiger, Leopard, etc. Major releases tend to cost money; minor releases are free updates.
Okay. So you have Mac OS X 10.5.3 -- that means you have the latest minor release (.3) of Leopard (10.5).
> I want a copy of Street Atlas but I need Boot Camp to get it. Doubt that’s possible because I suspect you need two processors and I only have one.
Not exactly.
I presume "Street Atlas" is a Windows-only program, so you need Boot Camp to be able to run Windows on your Mac.
"Boot Camp" is a way to have two separate operating systems on your computer's hard drive, typically Mac OS X and Windows XP. They occupy entirely separate regions on your hard drive. Using Boot Camp, you can start and run either one, but you can only run one at a time -- you have to restart (reboot) your computer to switch from one to the other.
While one operating system is running, the other is not active at all. However, while Mac OS X is running, it is able to access the part of the hard drive that has Windows on it. So you can access the Windows files from OS X (with some limitations depending on the way Windows was installed (the disk format, NTFS or FAT32)).
While Windows is running, it can't access the Mac OS X part of the hard drive (Windows isn't as smart about other disk formats).
You can run Boot Camp on a Mac with any "Intel" CPU, from a Core Solo to a Core 2 Duo like yours. So you shouldn't have a problem there.
I DO strongly recommend that you engage the assistance of a friend or family member who is reasonably computer savvy, before you embark on Boot Camp. It's not hard, and you can surely do it, but it will be comforting and save time if you have someone you can ask questions of.
Or you can just post on FR, and weed out the Apple fanboi raves, and the Windows-drone trollisms. ;-)
I would not use boot camp. It requires you to well BOOT.
Parallels and VMWare let you run windows in a window (which can actually bethe how screen). They also have the functionality to run just the windows app in a window. The stuff is not perfect but pretty cool. You can switch from windows to make by moving you mouse!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN9jNNeEd98&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjVZt-G2qC8&feature=related
VMWare is similar. Horses for courses which is better, I use both.