Why Have More Than One Operating System?

Multiple OS's on your computer? Windows XP, Linux, MAC OSx?

Why not get out of your comfort zone and learn some thing new?

I use a lot of different tools to test hardware and some software.

Mainly I am a hardware guy, I don't mess with software unless I need it for my business. (Games are the exception   ).

With all the choices for OS we have today why limit it to one?

On my tower (which is my main computer) I have three - Windows XP for work / business, Windows XP (for games), and Windows 7 (currently the 32 bit version, soon to be the 64 bit that didn't work out too well...).

I try (don't always succeed) to keep the XP OS clean and operational, it is the OS that I do all of my work on.

The other OS I am experimenting with and learning is Windows 7. I prefer to learn on the tower computer because I have most of the tools on other drives in the computer.

At one time the tower had a 120 Gig hard drive now has a 120 GB SSD broken in to four partitions (it was a long and tedious job getting it done) that had Windows 2000, OS/2, a version of Linux (Red Hat), and DOS. The boot manager was OS/2 which allowed for up to 8 bootable partitions on a hard drive (I have not found a OS to date that allowed for over four bootable partitions besides OS/2).

The 5 Steps to high quality and cheap DIY Computer Repairs Get It Today...

This brings me back to why not have multiple Operating Systems on your computer?

• If you are considering upgrading or moving from one OS to another maybe you should keep the current one you are familiar with until you are comfortable with the new one.
• If you are the experimenter type of person using a dual boot with two or more OS's will allow you to keep one clean and stable while you use the other one to test your ideas/software/hardware. By making an image of the second partition if you blow it up just put the image back on and try a different approach.
• Dual Boot is cheaper than two computers and has more functionality than a virtual computer due to the limitations of the virtual computer software.

If you are interested in doing a multiple boot computer you can read about it here: Multiple Operating System startup.

Or in my Self Computer Repair Unleashed! 2nd Edition Manual.

The advantage of having a dual boot system is you can use the second OS to fix the primary boot OS, such as to make a back up image of the primary OS, clean viruses from the primary OS, do repairs to the primary OS. All with out using a ERD cd/dvd or pen drive. Very handy...