For everyday tasks, I use my Macs, the primary one being my MacMini. It is exposed to the Internet (Firefox primarily, Safari occasionally) for surfing, e-mail, shopping, billpay, etc. I use iTunes for playing background music while I work. VLC Player is available for video and movies. There is a choice of Office for Mac 2011, Libre Office or iWorks for documents and spreadsheets. For readers, a choice of the Kindle App or Calibre, but with a stand-alone Kindle and an iPad Mini, these get little use.
My preference for documents and spreadsheets is Office 2010. I am fortunate to also have an iMac. Win7 runs full screen on the iMac (in a Parallels VM) at an angle to my MacMini screen so both are visible simultaneously. The Win7 VM is where I store my important files – documents, spreadsheets, pictures, and all the personal data. It has an advantage for several reasons.
The VM is easily backed up, to an external HDD and to a NAS drive by copying the file, usually once a month just before doing Windows Update. It is a full system backup since it is the file that contains the Win7 OS. I do data backup (files under my User ID) on an unscheduled basis to the NAS drive and on an ongoing basis to an offsite backup. I also use the offsite backup to sync a small subset of my most critical files to my laptop, so when I have to travel there is no need to transfer the daily used files and no need to update the home computer when I return.
The Win7 VM has very little contact with the Internet, thus reducing exposure to Windows vulnerabilities. The MacMini/MacOS takes the exposure with much fewer risks. The Win7 VM is on the Internet only to update the installed programs, do Windows Update, and once a month visit a website that renders better in IE11. I can also use the MacOS side of the iMac by doing a three-finger swipe since both OSs are running simultaneously.
There is a legacy Access based program I need to run periodically. It was written in the era of Win95 or Win98 – back when we were God Administrators on our PCs and could do anything we wanted. The path is hardcoded to a folder in the root of the HDD: C:\acess00. I am able to run it in Access 2000 – but that doesn’t necessarily work on the later versions of Windows. So, I have a WinXP Parallels VM to serve the bill. It runs in a window on the Mac desktop because I also need access to the Internet and e-mail while using it, and I certainly don’t want to expose IE8 and Outlook Express. Although it has little access to the Internet except for updating programs, I run Avast A/V, Spybot 1.6, and Malwarebytes for protection and Firefox ESR. I also did the POS-ready hack, so I do get Windows updates.
Then there is the involvement with the sport of diving (Olympic, not SCUBA). My youngest son was a nationally and internationally competitive diver while growing up, which culminated in a college scholarship. Naturally, I became involved in the scoring process, originally on paper with calculators, and finally computerized. It is laptops on the pool deck that control the consoles and scoreboards. I run the MeetControl software in a Win8.1 fullscreen Parallels VM on a 15” MacBook Pro. I need connections to the Daktronics console to drive the scoreboard (RS232 DB9 to USB adapter), a second external monitor (mini port to VGA or DVI adapter), printer (USB), and wired Internet (RJ45) for live scoring. I run in a full screen VM because the specialized drivers for the adapters/peripherals need to be direct, not the ones Parallels uses generally.
And now, I am also running Win10 in VMs on the three machines. This is mostly for my own edification and to keep up with Windows. I just updated three Win10 VMs from v.1607 to v.1703. And I have had one Win10 Insiders Preview running since Oct 2014. I don’t like Win10 or where Microsoft is going with it. Other than being able to help others exposed to it, it will never be on any of my production machines.
It is nice to be able to pick and choose the version of Windows I want when I need use it. It is nice to know that if Microsoft wrecks it with an update or it crashes, all I have to do is delete the file and copy the latest backup file to the Mac hard drive.
But it is even nicer that my main usage is on the Mac that just works.
