horang2

Hi, i'm looking to install windows xp on my mac (currently running Leopard). i have questions for some of you who's done this before... which would be better? Bootcamp or using parellels?
I've just recently switched over to Mac and i luv it, but need to run dos for hardware mod and stuff, so.
If anyone could give me some advise or recommendations on parellels, i'd really appreciate it.

sinclair_tm

Well, do you need to run DOS or Windows? Remember, Bootcamp is for booting into Windows natively, and Parallels is for a virtual PC. Native means you will be able to get to the hardware, where the virtual PC will be fake hardware. Bootcamp will only work with Windows XP or Vista. Parallels, and VMWare Fusion, will allow other OSes to load in the virtual PC, so you can run DOS in them.

shuuhen

I personally use Boot Camp and VMware Fusion. Boot Camp is nice for situations where you want the best performance or if you want a free option. Performance is mainly a concern for the more demanding games and intense development (although I heard VMware Fusion 2 will have some good improvements - namely multiple cores - which help with development).

For most uses, you should be fine with either option. I personally prefer VMware Fusion since I do about 98% percent of my computing in either Mac or Linux/*BSD (would be 100%, but people like making me use Windows programs even when a Mac/Linux version or equivalent exists). VMware Fusion (and Parallels) allow you to run Windows and Mac OS X at the same time. This is great since I only want to run a Windows program for a short amount of time, but I keep my Mac programs running. Programs like LabView, Visual Studio and other engineering/developer related programs run fine for me so I doubt you'd have problems with others.

With VMware Fusion and maybe Parallels, you can use a Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine. So you can start with Boot Camp, then add a virtualization program later (or have both setup and use whichever one you feel like at the time).