Forget Boot Camp, Check out Parallels Workstation

[northzax]

you can run multiple OSs on you mac, simultaneously http://www.parallels.com/ Yes, that means you can have OSX, XP and Linux running at the same time. no rebooting required. you gotta admit, that's pretty freaking cool.

[realisticphish]

1. i'm definately getting this

just to be clear, parallels isn't released for mac yet, right? because the page was kind of confusing

[northzax]

2. there's a beta you can get

if you sign up to buy the full version that is supposed to be out the end of the month (April that is) only 40 bucks.

[LeftCoast]

3. I believe Parallels only works with Intel Macs

Also, the review I read indicated a bit of a performance drop when running it. It's a nice idea though. Will be looking forward to hearing 1st person reports from users who try it out. :hi:

[cheezus]

4. it works okay

didn't want to spring for XP but I did have a boxed copy of 98 lying around. Good enough for testing out webpages in IE.

the first beta gave me a kernel panic one time, but that's been fixed since.

When the Windows virtual machine is running full speed, paralles takes about 70-80% of each core, so but I haven't noticed any slowdown on the OS X side as a result.

[Bozita]

5. David Pogue's NYT column: "Run Windows and Mac OS Both at Once "

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/technology/13pogue.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

April 13, 2006

David Pogue

Run Windows and Mac OS Both at Once

ONLY a week ago, Apple released what seemed like an astonishing piece of software called Boot Camp. This program radically rewrote the rules of Macintosh-Windows warfare — by letting you run Windows XP on a Macintosh at full speed.

Now, some in the Cult of Macintosh were baffled by the whole thing. Who on earth, they asked, wants to pollute the magnificence of the Mac with a headache like Windows XP?

Back in the real world, though, there was plenty of interest. Lots of people are tempted by the Mac's sleek looks and essentially virus-free operating system — but worry about leaving Windows behind entirely. Others would find happiness with Apple's superb music, photo and movie-making programs — but have jobs that rely on Microsoft Access, Outlook or some other piece of Windows corporate-ware.

Even many current Mac fans occasionally steal covert glances over the fence at some of the Windows-only niceties they thought they'd never have, like QuickBooks Online, AutoCad for architects, high-end 3-D Windows games, or the occasional bullheaded Web site that requires Internet Explorer for Windows.

Few could have guessed that only days later, Boot Camp would be eclipsed by something even better.

more...

[htuttle]

6. It's cool, but it's not the same

The last time I checked parallel's site (I can't seem to bring it up at the moment), their software did not enable 3d hardare graphics acceleration. That greatly limits the programs you can run on it (ie., very few games will run, etc...). Without the hardware graphics acceleration, the parallels workstation software would run about the same list of programs that Virtual PC will run on a PowerPC. They say they want to add graphics acceleration, but haven't yet.

OTOH, I installed XP on my MacBook Pro along with OSX using Boot Camp, and *everything* runs so far. No exceptions. In fact, it runs XP pretty damned fast, too. The big disadvantage is that I have to reboot to get into XP, and I can't access the Mac partition from Windows (though I can access the Windows partition from the Mac). Just takes a bit of planning before I boot into Window$ to make sure I have access to everything I need from the Windows side.