Time Machine and Boot Camp

I am about 99% sure I am going with the Macbook Pro now (after much research) and I one thing that I have not seen addressed is Time Machine with Boot Camp.

I think I saw somewhere that Time Machine only takes care of your OS X partition.

Sooo.... Many questions follow....

1) Is that true that Time Machine does not touch a Windows install (I plan on using Boot Camp as well as running Parallels off of the Boot Camp partition)

2) If a virus or worm or whatever infected windows will it affect OS X at all (remember using in Boot Camp and Parallels)

3) I have heard all about how there are no viruses for OS X, how is that, if a file has a virus for windows, what happens in OS X? AKA a photo has a virus attached or a website auto-installs mal/spy-ware, Do the files get downloaded and just not do anything and just sit there inactive?

4) If I go back in Windows using one of the "back-up indexes" will that apply in both Boot Camp and Paralles and delete any of the crap that may have come up in Windows.

Basically I am trying to keep a clean computer but I do surf the internet a lot and there are sooo many problems out there. Trying to understand... thanks for all your help.

 

1) dont know, but i doubt it does

2) not one bit

3) if theyr attached to the file yes theyll get downloaded, but nothing will happen

4) dont know

 

Ditto everything Stealthsniper said and to add since you do a lot of web surfing and you are concerned about viruses and spyware do ALL of your surfing in Leopard. No jokes, seriously it's very safe to surf on the web in OS X.

 

My questions is: OS X comes with Safari...why do so many use Firefox and some of the other browsers? What do they offer that Safari does not. I am asking this because I plan on getting a MBP soon...and I am one that does NOT plan on installing Windows. I do not do any gaming. Is there a browser that works through OS X that is better than Safari?

 

Honestly Safari is your best bet on the Mac. Apple fully supports it and it truly is the best browser on the Mac and it's the fastest even on the Windows platform. Safari has been out since beginning of 2003 and by now it should trump other browsers and for the most part it does but like IE on Windows it's not perfect and 3rd party browsers can offer better depending on use.

Firefox runs on the same mozilla code as Safari however it's the best backup browser when Safari fails such as certain websites that Safari won't render properly Firefox comes to the rescue. There are some tabbing features that other people like better in Firefox but if you did a pole most people on the Mac use Safari.
With the iPhone using Safari and now it resides on Windows you will see a lot more Safari support and users. I use Safari everyday and hardly ever anything else but Firefox is on my hard drive just as a backup.

 

Thanks hldan, that was very helpful to me and I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question. BTW, I am very envious of your iMac...it has to be awesome!

 

1) No, Time Machine doesn't have any connection with your Windows partition.

2) No, it won't.

3) Nothing happens. You're safe.

4) You mean System Restore?

And to desertmike, most of the users just use Firefox because they're used to it from Windows. Also, there still are some websites that don't work with Safari, so those users stick with Firefox. Personally, I'm a Safari user. It does its work well.

 

Yea the only thing that should be obvious, but if you do download a file with a pc virus, although it wont touch osx, if you were to bring that to a pc it could still infect it. So if you go to weird sites, or use p2p you might want to be a bit cautious if you give stuff to other people.

Also I guess one reason I use firefox is because I used it on windows, but also because it has a lot of useful extensions (such as adblocker plus), and also you can search a lot of websites using the built in search bar.

 

Thanks Sam, I appreciate your input too about Safari and Firefox, etc.