I’ve got an iMac late 2013 running El Capitan 10.11.6 with Bootcamp running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit.
These are all old now and work beautifully but are not supported or won’t be soon.
I use Norton Internet Security. Is this enough to keep my iMac / Windows safe from Hackers, Scammers etc.
I’d consider upgrading both the Mac OSX & Windows OS but am concerned it would affect the applications I rely on mainly: Metastock V11.0, 2009 & Microsoft Office 2013.
Any suggestions or help would be much appreciated.
Re MS Office, one also needs to keep installing security updates specific to Office. A summary,
MS Office 2013 for Windows is near to it’s end of support date in 2023. It’s going to be necessary to upgrade Office anyway. I use both the latest version of MS Office and current free version of Apache Open Office 4 on Windows 8.1 for which extended support also ends in Jan 2023.
Similar needs to be considered including new hardware to suit Windows 11, or maybe a Mac?
I am not an Apple Mac user, but the current Macs have switched over to a processor called the M1 of Apple’s design based on ARM. They used to use the Intel architecture x64 processors (or x86).
BootCamp allowed Windows to be installed and run on your Mac as it was using x64, but I am not sure it is still an option on the M1 newer machines.
It isn’t. @stanzweb will be needing to look for an intel based iMac, and it will therefore be second hand, as Apple is no longer selling any new intel machines. I wouldn’t get an Apple M chip based machine just yet anyway, I read in mac forums all over that there are serious issues with some. Its not across the board, but enough to make me hesitate. There are a few places selling second hand refurbished, as Apple does, itself…but they are not cheap, by any means.
Not necessarily. Your Mac will run later versions of the operating system. I’m currently running High Sierra on 2012 machines, but they can go to Catalina (which I hated… so Time Machine saved me.) Mojave isn’t too bad but may not run your software. It doesn’t run a lot of mine and I think its probably the last version that runs 32bit software, in any case.
I’d probably be tempted to save my pennies and install something like Virtualbox (or Parallels or VMWare Fusion), and Windows inside that, so its like another app. I have not used Bootcamp for years, now, so I have no idea really whether its still installable in the latest OS… might be worth throwing a question into https://talk.appletalk.com.au and you will need to register.
One answer that may or may not work for you is … take it off the network. Or isolate it from the network as best you can. This assumes that there is work you can do on the old computer that is mostly offline - and you can get a new cheap computer to do the things that you need to do online like email and web.
Not really. The bottom line is that new security vulnerabilities are being found all the time and patches for (some of) them are being released all the time - and without those patches your system may be vulnerable. You may be lucky for a while …
No package like Norton Internet Security is a substitute for keeping the software on your computer up to date.
Windows 7 appears to have been out of support for a couple of years already (ended January 2020) and with Windows being a prime target of hackers that sounds risky.
A suitable caution, and possibly something to take up with the publisher of Laptop Magazine. It’s their opinion on how well Windows 11 performs in a Parallels VM on M1 Arm hardware. Assume that once successfully installed in a VM Microsoft Update is more than happy to keep itself updated.
Consider,
In respect of consumer outcomes how important is it to keep an open mind to competition?
If I was to choose to use a Mac, the latest MS Office has M1 support. The option remains to use Parallels and a VM for legacy software that is Windows centric. But only if there was no other option. I’ve experience of a business/office with a split personality, both Apple and MS. No further comment require.
But it is not the normal version of Windows 11 that the author of the article installed, which is for Intel / AMD architectures.
It is a non-retail, OEM version for ARM only available from the MS developer facility.
There is a certain schadenfreude reading about people who don’t like the Microsoft world and go Mac, who then install Windows emulators because [fill in the reason(s)] and complain about how they work, or reliability, or compatibility, or [fill it in], or all of the above.
MS never really did differenciate between Windows the operating system, and Windows the application support environment for applications to run, in well, windows.
Many Windows applications will run happily in emulators or virtual environments, an example being Wine on Unix systems, mainly Linux these days for home users.
However, running Windows the operating system, requires more. It requires that the operating system directly support the processor instruction set architecture (and no version of WinOS does that for Apple’s M1, apart from standard ARM instructions in the limited availabilty ARM version), or a virtual machine environment exists that can trap and emulate the instructions not supported.
Games in particular for Windows use things like Directx that make extensive use of hardware features on Intel / Amd like vector processing, multimedia extensions, and floating point that will not be present in the same way on an M1.
So, the test is. Can you run a serious game written for Windows and WinOS on a platform other than the one that the OS was designed and written for?
Is the promotional material provided by Parallels true or false or we can’t honestly say one or the other?
If it makes it easier, assume one is not into gaming.
The original poster was asking about how to keep old MacOS and Windows versions safe.
As another poster had said, good protection is running current versions that have frequent updates for security patches.
Unfortunately, old operating systems are often running on old hardware, and you have the problem that to get to a current supported level, new hardware is needed.
The situation at present is that the current Apple Mac hardware uses the M1 system on a chip processor, and Microsoft does not support Windows OS on that processor. Natively using something like bootcamp, or in a virtual environment provided by something like Parallels. Full stop. Maybe MS will in the future but that is unknown.
If your computer system and the applications you run are crucial to you, then you would run hardware, OS, and applications in configurations that are all fully supported by all related vendors.
If you don’t really care then by all means take a chance, and if it works, great. But do not expect support if it does not.
That was answered noting the end of support dates were near.
In a later post the OP running a Mac subsequently considered the solution would require an upgrade to newer hardware and OS. Several pathways have been suggested. They include upgrading to the last of the Intel based Macs’s (refurb?) and using BootCamp @SueW.
One of the OP’s core needs to run MS Office can be met natively with the Mac version of Office 365 fully supported by MS. This includes MS supporting the latest M1 Mac’s.
For any other Windows applications/programs that do not have native Apple M1 (ARM) versions Parallels offers a pathway, YMMV.
In respect of ‘support’, and at risk of splitting hairs. It’s up to Parallels to support Windows V.xxx running on an M1 through a VM. MS may or may not like the outcome.
How great is the gap? MS has committed to continue to support ARM based devices with windows 11. It would seem just as Apple and MS briefly shared the same Intel hardware, the two are not that far apart when seeking performance with low power and longer battery life.
You could also take a look at Crossover. Theres a free trial so you could easily test whether your apps will work with it. Update your machine to High Sierra first but not before you do a time machine backup of everything (and to be sure of getting it right, also make a clone. SuperDuper! is the least expensive of the two recommended clone makers… Carbon Copy Cloner being the other).
Well if they don’t, you can be certain that MS will not be testing Windows releases, or fix patches, or security updates on that hardware platform and OS configuration.
And the MS update process can very easily check for a non-supported configuration and stop any updating.
