Duel OS?

Albireo · Sep 30, 2008

okay i know Bootcamp is the general program to duel OS widows to a mac... but ive seen a program that you dont have to partition your hard drive and it just flips from Mac OS X to Windows. anyone know the name of that program?

Noels · Sep 30, 2008

Albireo,

I think you're talking about Parallels or Fusion - both are Virtual Machines (VMs) that are installed in OS X and then Windows is installed in the VM. Check out Parallels or Fusion so you can get an idea of how they work. Both VMs are about $70-80 whereas Boot Camp is already included free in OS X. There are pros and cons for Boot Camp (Windows operates at native speeds in Boot Camp, but you have to close down Windows to go to OS X or vice versa) whereas in a VM, Windows runs slower but both OS X and Windows can operate on the same desktop at the same time.

Hope this helps, Noel

Albireo · Sep 30, 2008

Noels said:
Albireo,

I think you're talking about Parallels or Fusion - both are Virtual Machines (VMs) that are installed in OS X and then Windows is installed in the VM. Check out Parallels or Fusion so you can get an idea of how they work. Both VMs are about $70-80 whereas Boot Camp is already included free in OS X. There are pros and cons for Boot Camp (Windows operates at native speeds in Boot Camp, but you have to close down Windows to go to OS X or vice versa) whereas in a VM, Windows runs slower but both OS X and Windows can operate on the same desktop at the same time.

Hope this helps, Noel

Parallel was the one i was thinking of! thank you so much noel yeah i decided that i wanted to run that instead of bootcamp because im already tight on space on my 250g harddrive so i hated having to partition my drive to be about 53g smaller for Windows

dakineyj · Sep 30, 2008

I'm pretty sure you will still have to partition the drive. I'm running parallel.

giulio · Oct 1, 2008

You will not have to partition the drive. You can even download VMs that run instantly. I have Fusion 2.0 BTW.

SammySlim · Oct 1, 2008

You do not have to partition to run Parallels or Fusion. They create "virtual" HDs while running. As the other poster indicated, there are pros and cons of VMs versus Boot Camp. I highly recommend to the OP that you download a trial version of Parallels or Fusion, get a copy of Windows or whatever other OS you plan to use, and try out the virtual machine to see if it suits your needs. I have Fusion and love it, but I don't game and have a MacBook for example, so I don't need to use a separate graphics card for my applications. If you do, Boot Camp may suit you better.

Cheers

MacFanBoy · Oct 1, 2008

You can install windows xp on a 5 gig partition in bootcamp.
You can also try virtualbox a free virtual machine manager.