Thank you for the link to the guide. I admit, I read it all, twice, and it seems to be one of those situations that when I am actually doing it, I will then understand it.
It's pretty simple for those of us that have cut our teeth on computers a long time ago. Back in the day, if you owned a Macintosh, your only choice for running Windows software was a program called an "emulator". An emulator would essentially make your computer pretend to be a different kind of computer so that you could run Windows software on it. These emulators were slow and tedious to use - a far cry from modern virtualization products. But the concepts were born in that implementation. Nowadays, modern virtualization works in a similar fashion, but since Macs use Intel processors and x86 architecture, there's no need for any of that "pretending".
You're absolutely correct - it will all make sense when you start building your own VM. And both of these products do a great job of stepping you through the process. Unfortunately, as with many abstract concepts, it's hard to put a good, understandable definition into words.
I am also assuming that I can access the files that are stored on the VM from either Mac of the PC side of my Mac's partition. And, I can copy these or move these to an external hard drive, CD, or flash drive with ease. (?)
Absolutely. While the VM is running, both Parallels and Fusion have facilities for transferring files back and forth between the virtual and host OSes. In fact, you can drag and drop files from your Mac desktop to your Windows desktop transparently.
You have been most helpful and patient. Thank you.
Celeste
No problem, that's what we're here for.