Topic 14

Operating systems (multitasking, boot) and utilities, for example, defragment, disk format, virus scan programs by Xaio Xaio

There are two major operating systems today – Windows and Macintosh. Both of these operating systems can perform the tasks listed above. I’ll go in details on how each operating system performs the tasks listed above and many others.

First, and perhaps one of the main tasks is multitasking. Multitasking refers to being able to perform many tasks at the same time. For example, listening to music on iTunes while working on a document or watching a movie while creating a PowerPoint slideshow. Both Windows and Mac can perform this. And switching of programs is very easy. In Windows, you can just press Alt+Tab while in Mac you have to press Apple+Tab to switch between the programs.

Boot refers to starting up the computer. From experience, Mac OS starts at a faster pace than Windows. After the computer has been started, you can click on “Start” buttin in Windows OS to start working and for Mac, just go to Finder or search for whatever you want to use in spotlight.

Utilities just refers to “useful programs” that in computers’ case help the computers run more efficiently. This is where the main difference comes between Windows OS and Mac OS. While in the case of Windows, you HAVE to use all these utilities in order to make your computer run smoothly, in case of Mac, none of this needed. Why? It’s just because of the basic infrastructure of the two operating systems.

In windows, disk defragment and disk formatting should be done once/month so old files are processed properly and new files are more accessible to the user. If this isn’t done then the computer becomes slow because it takes more time to access the old files. If this is done, then the computer is “relatively” faster because the old files have been defragmented. Formatting of the disk refers to preparing a hard disk for use. This is needed when the operating system is corrupt or there’s a virus in the system. Then the formatting of the disk should be done so that the virus is taken care of and the disk is ready for use again. Both of these are not needed in Mac OS because Mac automatically keeps a record of all the new files that are created and hence the spotlight function is much more faster than the search function in Windows.

Now the last thing: virus scan. As we all already know, Windows has about 114,000 known viruses while Mac has…none. Yep, that’s right – Mac has no viruses and hence none of the anti-software stuff is needed for Mac. A Mac user can just use his Mac while not worrying about any spyware or virus cleaning his/her hard drive. Windows users, however, have to be on a look out for possible viruses all the time. That’s why windows users spend all their money on extra software to keep their computers running smoothly! Conclusion is buy a Mac and use the computer for what it was made for! Be happy!