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Check for academic pricing on Parallels and VMware Fusion if you qualify. Can save you almost 50%.

WHY SOMEONE WOULD LIKE TO DO SUCH THING??? INSTALL ANYTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH WINDOWS IS ASK FOR TROUBLE..LION IS THE BEST OPERATIONAL SISTEM IN THE ENTIRE PLANET.....I REALLY HATE WINDOWS AND EVERYTHING RELATED TO IT...

I love parallels for running Windows 7. If you have an iPad, it is the only choice because of their amazing App. What is so special? Well, the iPad can run a virtual instance of Windows without even opening Parallels on the host machine. The pointing capabilities could do with a trackpad mode, but apart from that it is really cool!

michalh, on 06 July 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

Or, keep an eye open for the macupdate and other company bundles. Parallels has been in at least one per year for the past few years.

You would run Windows on a Mac in order to access special programs which have no realistic Mac alternative. There are plenty of them in Finance and Engineering.

MartinGonzalez, on 06 July 2012 - 03:43 PM, said:

Four reasons:

1) To run Pro Apps (like AutoCAD 2011) that on a 2007 Macbook Pro runs like a joke but on the same machine running Window 7 x64 SP1 with 6Gb RAM runs like a dream.

2) To develop multi platform (Mac & PC) apps for those who are on the go and refuse to carry a second Notebook just for that.

3) You are a Mac user who live in China and you use Taobao.com online shopping and online banking from Bank of China & ICBC a lot. To use those services you are required to install their PC-only proprietary App just because they believe nobody uses Mac.

4) You are a Mac user who make a living from investment (Stock, gold, & etc) and your broker's proprietary app only runs on PC and you broker still believes nobody uses Mac.


When you realize what coexistent of Mac & PC is gonna do for you, you'll appreciate Bootcamp, VMware, & Parallels. Before the Mac Intel era, all mac users who fits the above, must own separate machines.

This post has been edited by anstormacworld: 06 July 2012 - 05:28 PM

But you would never use Windows 8, which is absolutely an awful OS. It is a phone OS adapted to desktops, it doesn't do much of anything well. If you need Windows on your Mac, use Windows 7.

Some of us need windows for gaming as well. Mac refuses to add any Real graphics cards to any of their systems, so game makers all but ignore Mac for gaming of any kind.

I installed W8 release preview just to check it out. I think its fun to try new software.
Just because you have a mac doesn't mean you Must hate everything Microsoft.

MartinGonzalez, on 06 July 2012 - 03:43 PM, said:

As far as I can tell, there is a certain percentage of people who believe that the system admistration load on Mac OS X is way too low, so they run Windows or Linux so they have ample time administering systems.

Windows is a good operating system, especially when you don't have to personally administer the computer. While I'm arguably a pretty technical guy, I was fortunately one of the last people to be upgraded to Windows 7 at work (from Windows XP, the company skipped Vista). I'm still using Office 2007 whereas most of my colleagues have moved to Office 2010. But I don't manage my work computer, that's the IT department.

Linux is a great operating system for servers and embedded devices like routers. As far as I can tell, Linux on the desktop has perpetually sucked mostly due to the same issues that have been around for 15+ years: system administration load, poor device driver support, and horrible end user documentation (and no, man pages aren't end user documentation).

Again, if you need to run Windows software and someone else is going to administer the Windows installation, that's a fine thing to have on your Mac.

Let's remember that an operating system is a big complicated program that lets other big complicated programs co-exist peacefully, so it's really about the applications you run on your computer, and much less the operating system itself. I think more about what about what I want to do with my computer with the applications that aren't part of the OS, rather than what I need to do on the OS. Basically, a good operating system should be non-intrusive.

This post has been edited by cv: 06 July 2012 - 06:12 PM

i did Parallels. Win8 is painful.
And it's deleted with zero chance of return.

I can't see a reason for this anymore. All of the old arguments are gone.

The article didn't cover how to set things up so you can run EITHER from Bootcamp or any of the Virtualization solutions as you choose - but I'm quite certain it can be done - without installing two copies of Windows.

The VM Ware screen picture at least alluded to this ("No Bootcamp partitions found," but nothing was said about your options if one (or more?) WAS found.

Any insight on this?

anstormacworld, on 06 July 2012 - 05:24 PM, said:

You're 100% spot on about programmes like Autocad on the Mac which are crippled by developer indifference and/or lack of resources. Spot on too about finance applications and portals outside the USA, many of which bar Mac users from access. It's unfortunate, but until all these people realise that Macs are no longer a 'weird minority cult' , we have to look at ways to run Windows.

A