confessions of a multi-booting geek

yea.  i am one of those geeks.  the type that gets or builds a new pc/laptop/netbook and then tries to cram as many operating systems on it as i can.

at one point in my life i recall having a multiboot setup of 5 different os's. recently i've triple booted my msi wind w/3 os's and my macbook air w/a mere dual boot...



however, recently i just redid my desktop setup and upgraded hard drives (did full backups, rotated out my older than 3 years old hdds; remember that hdds will fail and when they do its usually not right after  a backup). this time i decided to keep my current setup simple; just a single boot setup w/the option to dual boot w/any os i want by leaving a 100gb partition unallocated and unformated.

normally my desktop would be a multiboot setup of xp prof (32bit), mce 20005, vista ultimate 64bit, ubuntu, os x leo; in turn requiring a partition for each os.  i decided on not doing a multiboot setup due to the much improved performance of virtual machines in the last 2 years and the availability of memory for very cheap!  i just did a minor update to my desktop and went w/an AM2/AM2+ board and in turn the ability to run a 64bit os and 8gb of memory.

so now i run my other operating systems in vmware and in turn can keep my partitions much cleaner and much easier to rebuild/restoring after testing new apps or files (just in case they are virus ridden).  on the laptop front, i've come to realize that i really only end up using one of the operating systems and in turn go back to a single boot setup so i can reclaim the hdd space.

so yes, i admit that i really only do use one os on my computers but that os is dependent on what the computer is used for. windows is still my main one but os x is getting much more love on my laptops.  my macbook air w/the ssd upgrades really have taken the role of my portable machine.

i run the following:  vista ultimate 64bit on my desktop, vista and win7 on my msi wind, osx leo on my macbook air (but use parallels and xp), and vista for my hp.

so why do i multiboot? i do it for the knowledge acquired, keeping the skills fresh, and just for the geekiness that is multibooting.  whats more geeking than messing w/bootloader or the MBR or grub?? ;)

finally, here's a few of my youtube vids of multibooting and various machines/setups.

Ubuntu on a TC1100

[youtube 1rvnK9SmXf]

Quad booting on my desktop

[youtube EJPWgDQhjQ0]

Triple booting w/osx

[youtube GWqg5RtW6eI]

HP DV6700t and OSX

[youtube WzRwHKGMz9M]

MSI Wind Triple boot (osx, xp, vista)

[youtube BjJ7JKbUe5c]

MSI Wind, OSX and Vmware demo

[youtube 3YHprxzxnN4]

MSI Wind triple boot (osx, ubuntu, xp)

[youtube APZyhMspnJE]

MSI Wind touchscreen mod, vista origami experience 2.0

[youtube Mp21JySw6dA]

Dell Latitude XT and Win7 beta

[youtube hioUYiWlHNQ]

Macbook Air (rev a, 64gb ssd) boot, sleep, shutdown times

[youtube -G-DorsOhMA]