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General

  • Booting From Alternate Drives

    If serious system errors prevent you from even booting up your computer at all, being able to start the computer from a different hard drive can prove to be a useful troubleshooting resource. Both Mac OS X and Windows XP let you boot the system from an "alternate" hard drive...

  • Command Line Interface

    The Command Line Interface (CLI) is also known as a shell, console, command prompt or terminal. The first operating systems (like MS-DOS or UNIX) had neither graphical user interfaces (GUI) nor mice. Instead, tasks were performed by entering commands with the keyboard. An interpreter launched the desired application and returned the result on the screen. Sets of tasks could be launched using batch files to speed up a workflow...

  • Creating Screen Captures

    Both operating systems have the ability to capture your entire screen — or a portion of it — and save it to an image file.

    Neither has the built-in capability of capturing live video off of your screen. However, Microsoft offers Windows Media Encoder as a free download, which supports screen capture to video. Apple does not offer any free software to capture video. OS X users who need screen capture to video can purchase Ambrosia Software's SnapzPro for $49...

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Automation

  • Scheduling Automated Tasks

    The ability to schedule tasks that run automatically in the background can be very useful for speeding up a workflow. Both Mac OS X and Windows XP offers this ability to users...

  • Scripting & Workflow Automation

    Both operating systems provide scripting languages. Mac OS X's primary scripting language is called AppleScript, while XP's is called WSH (Windows Script Host)...

Working Remotely

  • Network Installs

    One critical component of network installs is the concept of "imaging," or creating an identical copy of a fully configured machine. Once you make an image, you can then replicate it across subsequent computers, letting you set up multiple computers simultaneously...

  • Remote Control

    Support for remote control lets you access one computer from the desktop of another. Rather than having two computers side by side, one can be in a remote location — yet by displaying it on the desktop of your local computer, you can use it as if you were sitting right in front of it. Mac OS X has more methods of remote access than Windows XP, but it lacks an included viewer, so XP's included solution will be more practical for most users...

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