New IMAC & Forum Member

My 7 year old Windows XP Gateway machine finally bit the dust so I decided to make the change to Apple.

The thought of Windows Vista was to much for me so I just ordered an IMAC 24". 4GB memory and 1.0TB hard drive. Should get delivered next week. In the mean time I'm using my Sony Vaio laptop. I've also got an HP Mini netbook for when I travel.

I'll need to run some Windows applications, so I bought Parallels Desktop. Any words of wisdom out there regarding the setup and use of Parallels?

This is not my first Apple machine as I had an Apple IIe with dual drives! But that was more than a few birthdays ago. Boy, I thought that was a real hot rod back then.

Hoping I can learn some things on the forum as my learning curve is quite steep.

First of all, hello and welcome to Mac-Forums.com and the Mac World! This is the best Mac forum I've ever come across, and I'm sure lots will support that.

I've never personally owned an Intel Mac before, but given that they do run on Intel chips, you can natively dual-boot OS X/Windows.

That's personally how I would do it, unless your needs is that you either need or just want to be able to run a Windows desktop while running OS X.

Parallels (as with any virtualization) will let you run a variety of OS's in a contained environment. Also, they virtualize all of their hardware, which will put limits on their functionality. Those limits depend on the version of the software, and over time these limits can change.

Virtualization takes a little getting used to, but for running typical Windows business or productivity apps it would be fine.

Getting parallels configured is a cinch and as long as you have a licensed copy of Windows, you'll be up and running in no time flat.

Regards

Raz0rEdge said:

Getting parallels configured is a cinch and as long as you have a licensed copy of Windows, you'll be up and running in no time flat.

Regards

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I'll be loading a licensed copy of Windows XP Home. In order to logon to work, I need to utilize Internet Explorer.

There's a few other applications I have that require Windows, although I want to minimize the use of these programs as much as possible.

Thanks for the info.

I use VMFusion and it works flawlessly for the purpose you state. I use it to log onto work and do some stuff for work since my company is Windows driven. I have had no problems. I much prefer this over dual booting. I can start up windows on the fly and do what I need to and then go back to OSX. I really like the 4 desktops that OSX uses, just like Linux. I have my windows running on desktop 4 so it's out of the way. Good luck.

verdejt said:

I use VMFusion and it works flawlessly for the purpose you state. I use it to log onto work and do some stuff for work since my company is Windows driven. I have had no problems. I much prefer this over dual booting. I can start up windows on the fly and do what I need to and then go back to OSX. I really like the 4 desktops that OSX uses, just like Linux. I have my windows running on desktop 4 so it's out of the way. Good luck.

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Thanks. The store only had Parallels, so there was no choice for me. I wasn't even aware of VMFusion until after the purchase.