A few Q&As caught our eye:
Virginia Beach, VA: Livecare, macAfee, Norton, etc: Why aren’t the costs of these services considered when purchasing a Windows machine? I keep hearing that Macs are overpriced, but don’t recall needing to subscribe to a antiviral package.
Rob Pegoraro: In the computing industry, the phrase for this kind of calculation is “TCO,” or total cost of operation. And you should think about these costs–financial and otherwise–when buying a computer or any other complex electronic device.
Dave (Fairfax, VA): I want to migrate from a PC to a Mac. In the meantime, I want to use an external hard disc to back up my PC data and eventually move it to the Mac. Can I buy an HFS+ disk now to back up my PC data; or do I have to buy NTFS hard disk now, and reformat it HFS+ after I’ve moved the data to a Mac?
Rob Pegoraro: Nope. Get your external hard drive, format it as a FAT32 disk, and you can use it with your Mac and your PC interchangeably. (FAT32, NTFS and HFS+ are all disk file-system formats; the first two are Microsoft standards, while the last is Apple’s.)
DC: Hi Rob- Hope you can take my question. Looking to buy a new laptop to replace a desktop that has been “hijacked”. What do I need to know as I go shopping? I want to make sure it comes loaded with proper protection. Thanks!
Rob Pegoraro: You can’t–nobody sells a Windows PC, AFAIK, with a really good set of security software. Best you can do is to buy whatever computer meets your needs, then follow the items in this checklist: Basic Rules Plus Common Sense Add Up to Security
Or, you know, you could just get a Mac.
Full Q&A session here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Whit” for the heads up.]
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