The best way to run Mac and Windows.

I bought my first Mac in 1988. It was great for its time. At some point, I wanted to run Windows and Mac. I bought a Mac that actually had two CPUs, a Mac CPU and an Intel 486 on a card. This was actual hardware intel CPU -- not software emulation.

My experience with this Mac was so-so. It mostly worked, except for the peripherals. In my experience, whenever you try to run two operating sytems at the same time, I've had problems with the peripherals.

Fast forward to the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. Mac Classic was actually Mac OS X running and then Mac OS X ran Mac OS 9 as a sub-process. This mostly worked, but again the problems that we ran into were with USB peripherals. There was a conflict between two operating systems.

The solution that I have today is the best. I have an old Mac which still works for me and I bought a refurbished PC running XP Home for only $300 complete with everything.

I have two desktop systems, one Mac and one PC and this is what works for me.

If I had a need to be portable, I would try a Mac laptop (if I could afford it), and I wouldn't run two operating systems at the same time. I imagine that Parallels would have the same type of problems that I've seen before with two operating systems trying to run the same computer. It will probably work, except for some of the peripherals.

Bootcamp sounds better to me. In my opinion, running one OS at a time works best, even if is slower to switch back and forth.

kaydell said:

If I had a need to be portable, I would try a Mac laptop (if I could afford it), and I wouldn't run two operating systems at the same time. I imagine that Parallels would have the same type of problems that I've seen before with two operating systems trying to run the same computer. It will probably work, except for some of the peripherals.

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Well, back in the day virtualization technology didn't exist in the form it does today. So although the net effect is that you're running two operating systems simultaneously, in reality that guest OS is running on dedicated "hardware" as far as it's concerned. It actually works quite well both in Parallels and VMWare Fusion. There were some problems earlier on with USB 2.0 peripherals, but most of those issues have been ironed out.

Interestingly, running Windows within a Mac or on a Linux machine, isn't the only application for virtualization. For example, in our data center, we'll purchase one very powerful server and run tens of different virtual servers from it. It works quite well and allows for a great deal of redundancy. This technology is quite mature at this point. You should give it a second look.

As a long time Fusion user who ultimately gave up on Boot Camp, I would have to agree. These products run Windows very well. I have had no issues with my USB peripherals - none. If I was you, I would download the free trial versions of either Fusion or Parallels and see for yourself before partitioning your drive. While if you need to run Windows natively Boot Camp is the only solution, in my experience the convenience of being able to run Windows applications side by side with mac applications (even without the full windows interface being visible) is extremely convenient and I finally gave up on the whole rebooting thing. I strongly encourage you to try them. They work great and are very fast.

Cheers and good luck.