Taking a Beating in BootCamp

Well it happened this weekend for one of the new Mac owners in the faculty. They had purchased a new Macbook Pro based on advice that the BootCamp Beta would be a problem free setup. But as it happens, that is not what happened, it turns out that the Windows OS crashed out several times and became problematic. So this individual comes to me this morning, after I had warned last week that BootCamp is beta and the only people that will be able to help out with it are "us in the faculty" Apple doesn't support it yet, and MS - well I don't think they are too happy either. I also advised that the individual stay completely Mac based for the mission critical project that is in the works right now, even though it was at the time all on a Windows machine. I don't know how bad things are or if there is any data loss - it appears that there are several major device drivers that are not there. To top it off, the significant other of the individual tries to kick up some FUD by saying told you so - with regards to the Windows side... well no kidding, it's the OS that is faulty not the hardware - the hardware is not what is infected, even though this is something it took me a fair while to explain this morning. Of course, there are also others in the faculty that have had no issues at all (with a Mac Mini so far). But there is no mission critical data on that computer (that I know of). Bottom line - even if they are eager, people should never put mission critical data on a beta system. Even if they are true geeks in every sense of the word, but just ignorant of where they are going into, safe the time and headache and use the simple solution that works. Based on this, I would recommend BootCamp only to those who can afford downtime and would tell anyone moving over from the Windows world to Mac to go Mac only for everything that they can and then try Windows if there are a few specific applications that are not available - preferences be damned (they are buying a Mac to be free of headaches). Technorati Tags: BootCamp, Apple