Experiences with Parallels

Parallels is an incredible piece of software. It allows you to seamlessly(!) run Windows XP as a window on the Mac.

Installation is easy. Install Parallels, and then feed it the CD and license key for Windows XP. It looks just like you're installing Windows on a new computer. Once done, one must point the IE web browser to update.microsoft.com multiple times to download all the latest fixes. I also installed an anti-virus program on the Windows installation.

One lesson learned on this. I used the option in Parallels to quickly and easily create a typical virtual machine (VM). This works great, but note that it only allocates 8 GBytes of disk space. I strongly encourage you to think about the total disk space you may need for Windows and related software, and allocate the disk space when creating the virtual machine. Parallels does allow you to create a second drive later, but one cannot enlarge an existing NTFS drive/partition unless you have software such as Partition Magic. Plan ahead.

Parallels will dynamically manage the memory footprint on the Mac. I have 2 GBytes of RAM on my Mac and so using 512 MBytes or even 1 GByte of RAM for Windows/Parallels is not a problem. One can also dynamically change the Screen Resolution for Windows, and Parallels will automatically resize the window.

Newer versions of Parallels provide a more transparent perspective into the virtual machine. I have yet to play with these features.