questions on running parallel 10

[cusco]

just made the switch and ordered the macbook pro. it will come with parallel 10, which from what i gathered allows me to run windows and windows program together.

the two programs i use the most is adobe photoshop and MS Money.

question is, do i need to install a full blown win7 or win8 OS in order to run those programs? if so, does that mean i'll also need to install antivirus & firewall in win OS as well? or would installing the antivirus & firewall in the OSX be enough to cover both?

my MBP will come with 256G SSD, but even then i'd like to keep as much free space as possible.

thanks in advance.

 

[MacInWin]

Yes, you'll need a fully licensed copy of Windows to install, and yes, you probably should get an A/V for Windows. I say "should" because there is a way to avoid that using backups. What I do is to install windows and my one software package for which I need it, then immediately shut it down and then backup the resulting file. Now I copy that file to some place safe as an emergency copy. Now I can run my Windows when I need, without A/V. If I get hit by a virus of any type, I just whack that image and go back to my pristine emergency copy and copy it back over the infected file. To make that work, I do store the data from the Windows machine in my OS X system (Parallels can let you see the entire machine from inside the Windows virtual machine.) so that when I go back to my clean version I haven't lost any data I've put in. I don't know if MS Money can do that, but I do know Photoshop definitely CAN.

 

[cusco]

how do you back up the resulting file after i've installed the windows + the programs i need? is that done in parallel?

 

[MacInWin]

Once the virtual machine is installed and configured, shut it down as you normally would, then in Parallels Desktop right-click on the vm name and select "Show in Finder." You will see a file ending in .pvm that is the parallels virtual machine file. That's the one to copy to a safe location as emergency copy.