Not long ago, I came across some cool-looking 'themes' for the Mac OS X interface on the Web. I tried to find the site again but I cannot remember anything except a reference to something Egyptian. Can you help? Will installing a theme, which is just a design, harm my computer? Sarah, Mid-Levels DQ: This was a rather interesting challenge and I am not certain I've found what you were looking at. There are about 161 Mac OS X themes available for download at the site InterfaceLift (interfacelift.com). One is the Egyptian-sounding 'AmunRaa Recording Studio 1.2'. I hope that helps. Also on offer are 16,461 Macintosh icons, with new icons posted almost daily. Another site worth checking is called Max Themes ( www.maxthemes.com ). Most of these themes and icons are free and easy to uninstall. I have not tried anything from either of the two sites but they appear to be fun. It is highly unlikely interface themes would do any harm to a computer but they could have some unexpected results. For example, themes that are designed mostly in black and grey could make it difficult to see certain items on your desktop. Things may not look as they should. I thought buying a Macintosh computer with an option to run Windows meant I could simply run the Microsoft operating system alongside Mac OS X, but I heard it is more complicated than that. I just want to be able to run a couple of applications on Windows with a Mac. Which program should I try to help me do that: Parallels, Fusion or Boot Camp? Name and address supplied DQ: All new Intel-processor-based Macintosh personal computers running on the Leopard operating system (Mac OS X 10.5) come with a utility called Boot Camp. This software allows your Mac to be 'dual-bootable', which means you can turn the machine on and choose to run either Mac OS X, Windows XP or Windows Vista (or Linux or any other operating system supported by Intel-based Macs). Boot Camp is what I call a Kierkegaardian system, which enables your machine to become an either/or box (the reference is to a 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who wrote an influential book on two life views, titled Either/Or). The other programs you mention, Parallels Desktop for Mac ( www.parallels.com ) and Fusion ( www.vmware.com ), are different because they use so-called virtualisation technology. They give you Windows in a window. You can run Windows (or Linux) on an Intel-based Macintosh computer on top of Mac OS X. For obvious reasons, that solution is great for people who want a little bit of Windows but a lot of Mac. Boot Camp is perfect for people who want beautiful Apple hardware but really want to run something else. So, which is it, Fusion or Parallels? This is something only you can decide. I have heard good things about both. I believe the latest version of Fusion is a little cheaper than Parallels. I suggest you go to a shop that has both running on a machine like yours and see which you prefer.