[MrsEmmaPeel]

My next PC will be a laptop with System Commander to let me switch between OS at will.

Command Line scripting is so passe.

I have the intel Mac, on which (with VMWare) I have XP loaded as a separate Window on my Mac Desktop. If I need to go from one environment to the other, I simply drag & drop.

Macs now on intel -- XP certainly can't have an alternate OS in a window on its desktop -- it can't be the chip - it must be the OS and its limitations.

Who wants to be King of the Command Line in the 21st Century? Give me a break. We can do better.

[ShadowAce]

Command Line scripting is so passe.

It really depends on the industry you are in. I use it all the time in order to do what I do, and I couldn't do my job without it.

[LibKill]

Mac hardware is overpriced in my opinion.

[editor-surveyor]

"XP certainly can't have an alternate OS in a window on its desktop"

Yes it can, as long as the display card you have will support it. I can run two pharlap DOS-extended virtual machines running AutoCAD or GPS post processing in separate windows in XP on an old Dell laptop that was built for 98SE, and has only 128MB of RAM.

Never believe rumors; test it for yourself.

[Señor Zorro]

Who wants to be King of the Command Line in the 21st Century?

Virtually any sys admin. Even Microsoft is beginning to realize this. Traditionally, Microsoft products have been administrable GUI-only or with second rate command line tools. Heck, .NET didn't get an MS command line build system until MSBuild with VS 2005. Exchange 2007 is slotted to have full command line administrative capabilities.

Now, if you want to write a letter to good ol' grandma, you don't want to use the command line. If, however, you have to administer any number of computers above one, you'll find that a GUI can't do better. The command line is still the quickest, easiest way.

[Still Thinking]

Macs now on intel -- XP certainly can't have an alternate OS in a window on its desktop -- it can't be the chip - it must be the OS and its limitations.

Of course it can, and in the same way and to the same degree as you're describing on the Mac. VMware is available for Windows, as is Virtual PC, Bochs, etc, etc, etc. I have about 8 VM's configured on the very machine from which I'm typing this, and I can any 2 or three of them simultaneously.

[MarkL]

Command Line scripting is so passe.

You must not work with Active Directory much... Ever use netdiag and dsdiag? Other then replmon, can you suggest any graphical AD and network communication (as far as Windows interserver communication diag) tools?

Mark

[MarkL]

XP certainly can't have an alternate OS in a window on its desktop -- it can't be the chip - it must be the OS and its limitations.

Huh? Microsoft has Virtual PC, then there's VMWare. I'm not sure of the latest version of Virtual PC (I used it before M$ bought it), but I've used VMWare for years...

In this image, I'm running Novell's Linux Desktop within a VMWare virtual machine. If you look at the tabs across the top, you can also see that I'm also running a Windows 2003 server, a NetWare 6.5 server, and another Windows XP workstation (with a Novell client on it), all on the very same WIndows XP Pro workstation. BTW, these are all fully functional systems. I can logon to both the WIndows and Novell servers from other computers on my network at home.

Mark