OS X As The Guest OS

Hi All
I find it is time to upgrade my MacBook Pro from 10.4.11 to Leopard or Lion. After I upgrade, several of my programs won't be able to be used, according to what I have read. My genius (???) plan is to use Fusion or Parallels and keep OS X 10.4.11 as a guest operating system so I can use my old programs & their documents.

Some examples of what won't work with a new OS are: Office 2004, Parallels, Turbo CAD. There are a few more (some camera & printer stuff mostly) Upgrading Office is no big deal (except for the money), as I understand my documents can still be opened & edited (hopefully my templates can stay, too). Turbo CAD presents a problem,a s the people at IMSI say none of my existing (hundreds) of CAD drawings will open under the new version of Turbo CAD. Yikes! (I have to export each to DWG & re-import to the new Turbo CAD. But, every time I export, lots of tiny changes happen, often un-noticed until it is too late.)

I tried asking VM Ware & the parallels people if this would work. I never got replies. I searched all over this forum & the internet as a whole, only to confuse myself.

Have any of you ever tried this trick? It would seem to be much easier than a separate volume & booting back & forth all the time.

Thanks for any insight on this issue! I sure appreciate it.
Paul

It's against the Apple EULA to do it. So let's end this discussion with "you cant".

As far as I can tell, Lion 10.7.x EULA allows 2 VM 'instances' in both server & client copies:

Paragraph B Item iii
(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software.

I was curious if I read this correctly, so I called Apple corporate, expecting to get nowhere. I was actually transferred to some division of their legal department. I was told "Go for it, It's fine." But only 2 VM's plus the copy running the computer. And, only Lion.

Interesting. I have not followed this for awhile. Used to be that the EULA allowed running Snow Leopard Server edition in a VM, but that was it. Note that the limitation is for running Lion in a VM ON A MAC ONLY, not on anything else ...

Cheers

Yeah, this is interesting because as Sammy replied above, I was also led to believe the same thing. But if Apple legal said it was OK.... they should know.

Yes, the EULA for Lion is explicit in its allowance of virtualized instances. However, not all VM products work with it - VIrtualBox doesn't (this has something to do with VBox emulating generic hardware which OS X sees as non-Mac hardware). Regardless, this EULA clause is not present in the Tiger EULA (as far as I know, Lion was the first version with this clause) which is the one that matters in this instance. If the clause is present in the Tiger EULA, go nuts. Otherwise, you aren't allowed to do so.