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Randy The Tech Professor

May 11, 2010 at 4:30 pm

Good, Better, Best Way To Run Windows On A Mac

Hello everyone,

Want to buy a Mac but you can’t bear to part with your Windows Operating System, programs and applications? You can have your Mac and Windows too and today I’ll show you the best way to do it!

There are many ways to run Windows on a Mac:

1) Parrallels Desktop 5 For Mac (GOOD)

“Mac OS or Windows? Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac lets you seamlessly run Windows and Mac OS X side-by-side, drag-and-drop your files between operating systems, and run Windows software on your Apple computer without rebooting”.

2) VMwareFusion (GOOD)

“Run Windows. The Mac way. Run Windows applications just like Mac applications, with seamless copy-­and-­paste, drag-­and-­drop, and printing functionality that “just works” with no additional setup required”.

3) Boot Camp (BETTER)

“Have a Windows application you need to use once in a while? No problem. Every new Mac lets you install Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7, and run them at native speeds, using a built-in utility called Boot Camp”.

4) VirtualBox (BEST!!)

“When we describe VirtualBox as a “virtualization” product, we refer to “full virtualization”, that is, the particular kind of virtualization that allows an unmodified operating system with all of its installed software to run in a special environment, on top of your existing operating system. This environment, called a “virtual machine”, is created by the virtualization software by intercepting access to certain hardware components and certain features. The physical computer is then usually called the “host”, while the virtual machine is often called a “guest”. Most of the guest code runs unmodified, directly on the host computer, and the guest operating system “thinks” it’s running on real machine”.

a) Download VirtualBox from Oracle (link is above).

b) Run VirtualBox and install Windows 7 (XP, or Vista) on it (you must have a legitimate copy of Windows).

That’s it!!! You are now running Mac and Windows at the same time. When you need to run a Windows application you just run it – you don’t have to reboot the machine or anything and you can move data back and forth with ease.

Professor Randy says: Run Mac and Windows at the same time! The simplest and most convenient way is to use the general purpose full virtual machine from Oracle: VirtualBox!



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