Why run OS X and Windows XP on an Intel Mac

There have been a lot of speculators on the net as to why you would need to dual boot / run both Windows XP and OS X on an Intel Mac. Aside from my personal preference for OS X and Unix based systems, Here are my lists why I need each one for work:

Reasons I need OS X:

  1. Presentations - Keynote is miles ahead of powerpoint. I can copy and paste from illustrator, drop in pdfs and the transitions are gorgeous. We have received many WOWs from customers when using Keynote
  2. PDFs - I generate reports where I have Excel files embedded in Word Documents. In windows, the colors in the embedded excel file dont print. In my Mac in Office 2004... no problem!
  3. Unix - I sometimes administer the company Debian web server. Running xwindows on Mac OS X, I am able to load up xemacs on the server or other x based programs. I doesnt work as easily using free software for windows.

Reasons I need Windows:

  1. Microsoft Access - I use it as a front end for SQL Server 2000. I havent found a good alternative where I can easily copy and paste data into excel
  2. Microsoft Outlook - the mac email client (corrected: Microsoft Entourage) doesnt cut it when talking to Exchange server 2003
  3. Windows File Sharing - There are a bunch of great websites like macwindows that tell you how to connect your mac to a windows domain. It seems like every update from apple breaks the connection. Not to mention if you are on wireless and it drops! The samba / windows file sharing support in Windows is a lot more resilient. P.s. I am on a Windows Server 2003 domain which seems to have more trouble than earlier versions

Im sure I can find a bunch more if I think about it, but these are the ones that are in the forefront of my mind every time I try to totally switch to one or the other.

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