Hey, did you hear? Someone’s giving away software! Free as in blowjobs (an act for which the Germans apparently have 500 words). Actually, by now it’s all done. Sorry slow-pokes.

The motivations for the giveaway are vaguely political and not too interesting, but the outcome is that I didn’t have to pay for CrossOver Mac Pro, a piece of software based on Wine that lets Mac users run Windows software far faster (and some degree less robustly) than the more traditional virtual machine solution.

Faster, you say? How much faster?

Do you have Office 2008 for Mac? How long does it take to load up a copy of Word? On my 2.4Ghz MacBook Pro it takes 22 seconds from clicking the icon to being able to type text. That’s not awful, I suppose, though quite slow compared to Word 2007 on a 2.4Ghz Windows machine.

Speaking of Word 2007, loading it through Crossover takes a mere 10 seconds until I can type. That includes the time it takes for Crossover itself to launch.

Hell, if it wasn’t free I’d have bought it!