You should not use an OEM disk, get a retail copy from eBay or something. You do NOT need SP2 to install XP on Parallels, any version will work - in fact any version of Windows will work.
Why can't an OEM disk be used? I got one from Newegg. Installed it with no problems whatsoever.
what exactly is the difference between retail and oem? There are a bunch of OEM copies online that are brand new and not used. Are they being sold illegally or something?
In hindsight, I suppose I would've checked how much more Retail costs.
That's weird. I mean if msft is selling it and letting it happen on ebay I'm assuming it's legal. I probably ended up with the "third class" of OEM (shrink rapped with a legit serial number). I just installed it and it activated OK, and is doing windows update now. No problems yet...
Tech support is a good point. But for me, I'm installing windows simply because I want to have it in case something doesnt' work on my mac (I'll prob just have office 2003 and that's it). If something goes haywire, and msft will charge me for tech support, i'll probably just reformat. In hindsight, I suppose I would've checked how much more Retail costs.
As far as Office 2003 goes - take a look at NeoOffice (http://www.neooffice.org). It's a Mac-native port of OpenOffice and fully compatible with MS Office document formats. It actually looks and feels more like MS Office 2003 than MS Office 2004/2008 for Mac (IMO).
Looks cool, but why would I want this if I'm running Office 2008? Just for compatibility?