Run Windows XP and OS X simultaneously on an Intel Mac
I’m not even going to call this a problem I solved because it’s just a program a lot of people already know about, but I didn’t, so here’s a shout out to it.
My friend Bob pointed out that Parallels had released Parallels Desktop, which allows you to run both OS’s at the same time by emulating Windows XP, and in his words, “kicks Virtual PC’s ass”. That’s because even though it’s an emulator that runs in OS X, it runs super fast natively harnessing the power of the intel chip instead of processing through several emulation layers first.
At a first look, I’m impressed with it. For an emulator, several things were easy right off the bat, such as good display resolution, network and sound support. Sharing folders could have been easier (you have to stop the emulator and manually set up shared files in the configuration) and I miss the drag and drop-into-the-window functionality for transferring files that you see in timbuktu and virtual PC, but it runs blazingly fast, and its fast user switching-esque cube rotating for switching between OS’s is kick ass. You can even make a cool ‘Smackbook Pro‘ using the macbook motion sensor to smack-switch between OS’s.
Wednesday 21 Jun 2006 | jordan314 | Computers, OS X, Windows XP, solved
One Response to “Run Windows XP and OS X simultaneously on an Intel Mac”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I also think Parallels is hot and sweet. As an update, i want to add that one can install Windows Vista (Beta 2 or Release Candidate 1, RC1) on an Intel mac under Parallels. Parallels is currently at version 1848 (where did they get the idea of using version numbers in the thousands?!?!). That is the version you’ll find at their download page (http://www.parallels.com/en/download/desktop/). But they have released newer versions by way of their support forums (http://forums.parallels.com/). A cursory search there will turn up version 1896, which i suppose is stable (see further down). But I don’t think that version supports Windows Vista. For that, you need Parallels Build 1908 Release Candidate 2 (as a RC, i suppose it’s not perfectly tested). With 1908, i am successfully running Windows Vista RC1. My understanding is that Parallels v. 1896 will run Vista Beta 2, but I haven’t actually tested that, since RC1 works in RC2 :P . The Parallels developers seem to really be on top of their game, so this information is probably already dated, but still true. My computer is an intel Core 2 Duo iMac.