Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

CHAPTER 27 WORKING WITH MICROSOFT WINDOWS AND OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS 519
Figure 27-2. Microsoft Windows XP Professional running in VMware
Running either Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion has some obvious advantages:
• They run on top of Mac OS X, providing you with the ability to switch quickly and easily
from one environment to another without rebooting; in fact, both Parallels Desktop and
VMware Fusion have modes that actually will integrate the running Windows applications
into your Mac OS X desktop.
• They can both run other operating systems besides Windows, allowing you to run Linux,
Free BSD, Solaris x86, and many other operating systems (Figure 27-3).
• You can run multiple instances of one or many operating systems at the same time.
• They are both reasonably priced, well-supported, easy-to-use products that are quickly
evolving with new features and better performance.
Despite the overwhelming advantages, there are a few disadvantages to both of these virtualization
products:
• To allow them to run on top of Mac OS X, many hardware devices need to be emulated.
Although this largely doesn’t affect performance much for most devices, it has a very big
effect on video acceleration performance.
NOTE VMware Fusion 1.1 and Parallels Desktop 3.0 finally both support DirectX 9, making it
possible to use applications that require it. However, there is still a rather significant performance
hit. As both of these products evolve, it is likely that video performance will continue to
improve, but it’s still a big consideration for some.
• You will need a copy of Windows or whatever operating system you choose to run, though
unlike Boot Camp these will allow you to use older products and upgrades.