Parallels

[mmalc crawford]

On Mar 5, 2007, at 12:13 AM, Matt Johnston wrote:

>>    Most hobby developers can't afford multiple systems.
>
> *pained look*
> In 1996 I bought a Black Performa 5400 for £1899. I was a pauper  
> student.
> Last year I bought an iMac intel and a MacBook Pro for the same  
> price. Computers are more affordable now. It just depends how  
> valuable your data is and whether you're trying to support a  
> burgeoning tobacco obsession (I've a local guy in mind here). When 2  
> GB of flash storage is £10, you'd be surprised how few people bother  
> to even try to back up.
> The bottom line is that in the event of a serious problem, it won't  
> matter if it's a partition or a folder.
>
The issue is not necessarily cost or "serious problems".

On my laptop I have four partitions: one for the current public OS  
release, one for the most recent OS build, one for the best recent OS  
build, and one data partition accessed by all three of the others.  I  
could easily imagine a similar setup for other developers (with  
different specifics and perhaps fewer -- or even more -- partitions).

This setup enables *me* to be considerably more productive than would  
otherwise be the case.  I'm not in any way suggesting this is typical,  
but I do know of others who adopt the same approach.  There is clearly  
a spectrum of use cases, with the majority of users in the "one  
partition will do fine, thanks" band -- but it's certainly also true  
that there are circumstances (however limited in number) in which  
multiple partitions are of significant benefit.

mmalc