I suggest the latter, honestly, because it’s very cool and well worth the money.

Your first step isn’t to download the application, believe it or not, but rather to decide whether you want to get a free 15-day product key or go ahead and buy the program and get a full product key. They also recommend you have the very latest version of Mac OS X, which is easily done with the Software Update capability on the Macs. You’ll also want at least a few gig of free disk space and at least 1GB of memory for performance reasons. Just like with Apple’s Boot Camp, there are some specific requirements that you need to meet before you can use Parallels Desktop, however, chief among them the requirement that you have an Intel-based Macintosh.

That’s why I was thrilled when Parallels released its Parallels Desktop, a full Windows-capable virtualization package for less than $80. Still, though, the idea of running Windows - or another OS - within Mac OS X through what’s called a “virtual machine” or “virtualization” solution, is too good to miss. I even had my tri-booting Mac laptop make it to the cover of a Linux magazine! I’ve run Microsoft’s Virtual PC, for example, but it’s a dog and even when you have lots of patience it’s pretty difficult to work within that environment even if you have the most powerful computer and least demanding application.įurther, I think that Apple’s Boot Camp program is incredibly smart and have been dual booting Macs for quite a while, though usually into different flavors of Linux or related.

I have to admit, I’ve been using Macs since the digital stone age and still get frustrated that I have to buy PCs so I can run Windows with any decent results.

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