Rebooting and Multitasking

I wondering if I can lose a couple of bad windows habits. First is rebooting periodically - at least every 2-3 days (if not multiple times within a day). I do..errr...I mean did this when my PC got sluggish. Or if was going to start working with a resource intensive program and wanted a fresh start.

The second is refraining from multitasking when doing certain tasks like burning DVD's or cd's, rendering and capturing video, backing up data or other CPU/OS intensive tasks.

I suspect some (or all?) of this caution may not be needed with OSX. I'm running 10.5.1 on a 2.4 ghz iMac.

Thanks for your input and advice.

JD

PS - I haven't really pushed my new Mac yet but I am thrilled with darn near everything about it. I love Safari (and I'm a longtime FF user and fan). I love the dock, and the included apps. But mostly, I love the straightforward and simple design of the interface. Every time I've struggled trying to figure out how to do something it was because my years of Window's conditioning had me trying things that were more complex than the solution on the Mac. I'm a happy switcher. ;D

Yeah none of those are really needed on a Mac, sure not multi-tasking while doing CPU intensive programs is not the best and might bog you down a bit but you always can if you want.

On a MAC with 2GB+ RAM there is absolutely no issue in doing multi-tasking. I do it on my MB with 2GB RAM. But yes, if the tasks are resource consuming then you might experience a temporary slowdown. I use spaces for multi-tasking... Ideal one.

Thanks guys - yea so far so good. That was a really frustrating part of windows.

Here's my response in defense of Windows (and I do this begrudgingly).

1. Rebooting. At work I run an XP machine, and I keep it up until our corporate software server pushes updates, which requires a reboot after installation. Frankly I keep it up for days without a problem. I used to brag about my Linux uptimes, but the XP machine seems to stay up fine for days without any noticeable performance degradation.

Fwiw, my work machine is a Dell Optiplex, dual core Intel 3.2GHz w/ 1GB RAM. It's been up for almost 7 days.

2. Multitasking and CD Burning. If you're on a single processor core machine, burning a disc is probably something you want to do separate from any other tasks, operating system notwithstanding. You need to push data to your burner so that the disc can be made w/o interruption. A multicore or multiprocessor system can in theory dedicate the needed resources to the job of burning a disc.

That said, if you're on a multicore system and you're running multiple jobs that are consuming all of the CPU cycles in the processor cores, you probably still don't want to burn a disc at that time. Again, this is independent of operating system.

A Mac is a wonderful machine, but it has its limitations based on its available resources.

I run photoshop+indesign and such while burning on my iMac Core Duo 2.0Ghz. So no problem.