Run Windows and Mac OS Both at Once

I mentioned Parallels in a previous post, a program for the Intel-based Macs that lets you run windows software without rebooting. Now the New York Times weighs in with a full-fledged review:

---

Parallels, like Boot Camp, requires that you supply your own copy of Windows. But here's the cool part: with Parallels, unlike Boot Camp, it doesn't have to be XP. It can be any version, all the way back to Windows 3.1 — or even Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 or MS-DOS. All of this is made possible by a feature of Intel's Core Duo chips (called virtualization) that's expressly designed for running multiple operating systems simultaneously.

Suppose you're finishing a brochure on your Mac, and you need a phone number from your company's Microsoft Access database. You double-click the Parallels icon, and 15 seconds later — yes, 15 seconds — Windows XP is running in a window of its own, just as you left it. You open Access, look up and copy the contact information, click back into your Mac design program, and paste. Sweet.

Using Boot Camp, you'd restart the computer in Windows, look up the number — but then what? Without the ability to copy and paste, what would you do with the phone number once you found it? Write it on an envelope?

Parallels is very fast — perhaps 95 percent as fast as Boot Camp. (It's definitely not a software-based emulator like Microsoft's old, dog-slow Virtual PC program.) It's even fast enough for video games, although not the 3-D variety; for now, those are still better played in Boot Camp.

The Mac will be known as the computer that can run nearly 100 percent of the world's software catalog. Microsoft will sell more copies of Windows. Consumers will enjoy the security, silent operation and sophisticated polish of the Mac without sacrificing mission-critical Windows programs.

You can use Boot Camp (fast and feature-complete, but requires restarting) or, in a few weeks, the finished version of Parallels (fast and no restarting, but geekier to install, and no 3-D games).

Can't decide? Then install both. They coexist beautifully on a single Mac.

Either that, or just wait. At this rate of change and innovation, something even better is surely just another week away.

---

Read the whole review. No matter how you slice it, those new iMacs are becoming more and more tempting.