General Information

SyMon is a PERFECT boot manager for PCs. It has a flexible setup system and powerful tools which allow you to install and maintain any preferable operating systems on a machine, in almost any combination.

A look into history
Programs and files keep getting bigger and bigger, but not as fast as the capacities of hard drives do. If in the early 1990s a hard drive measured about 210MB and was coupled with the Windows 3.1 of 15-20MB, today a hard drive of 500GB corresponds to the Windows Vista weighting 2-3GB. Thus, the correlation of the size of disc memory and a contemporary operating system has grown from 10-15 times to 100-200 times! All this happens despite the efforts of the developers to include into operating systems as many features as possible which were previously realized only with additional programs. So, users get cheap and large disc memory which has to be managed.

What's SyMon for?

One of the ways to handle disc memory is to install several operating systems. There can be several strong reasons:

• for the sport of it;
  One may want to have a look at other operating systems. Lack of freedom in choosing is the worst thing that can happen.
• acquire skills of working in new OSes;
  If you want to find a more profitable job and for this purpose you need to know a more sophisticated operating system which you would never choose for home but it's necessary to study it somewhere. In this case SyMon will let you study a new OS on your home computer comfortably and without detriment to your home OS.
• computer update with minimal modifications of your old OS;
  If your friends advise you to move to a new OS but you're afraid that not all programs you got used to will work flawlessly in the new one, you can just add this system instead of replacing the old one. Thus, you save a lot of money and do not strain your nerves because all the customary things will be available while you are adapting to the new OS. New hard drives are usually much more sizable than old ones, that is why the old OS won't prevent installation of the new one.
• childproof;
  Do you use a computer at home for work? Or maybe you have other important home work connected with a computer? And your child wants to play on it? You are afraid that such games can result in full reinstallation of the OS and other software on installation of which you spend so much time? Well, you can just install a second OS and set a password for yours. You can isolate both OSes so that children can have no access to your files! Such solution is also much cheaper than a second computer for games of your children.
• usage of OS in different languages;
  You want to use several languages on one computer, and your OS supports just one or two languages for user interface? Or, for some reason, you have to use an OS from a distributive which is adapted to national peculiarities? In this case you can also install several OSes and then draw them together by permitting access to common files.
• software tests in different software environments;
  You test programs written for several similar OSes like Windows. Or, probably, you are interested whether a tested program is smoothly installed in different Linux distributives. How to check it, quickly and without a dozen of desktop friends? The simplest way is to install as many copies of different OSes as you need.
• development of portable programs for different operating systems;
  You are a programmer developing programs for different platforms and you need the programs to be portable between different OSes, like Windows and UNIX. At the same time, you want to make the system of testing portability of your programs as simple as possible. Well, installation of several OSes is also the simplest and quite effective solution.

This is just a brief list of reasons why to have SyMon. On the whole, it has a much wider range of capabilities than are necessary to satisfy the needs listed above.

How many OSes can SyMon support?

SyMon is probably the record-breaker in this sphere. It supports up to 36 primary partitions per hard drive where you can install up to 20 various operating systems. Each system can be protected with a password. Also, you can set a password for booting from a floppy drive and for using integrated tools. Unlike many other OS bootup programs, you can configure SyMon on the fly, i.e. before booting or installation of an OS for which the installation program is written. Here you can get more information on capabilities of SyMon.

Your lovely boot manager!