Which is better for running Windows programs on Macs, Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop?

“In deciding to release a public beta of Boot Camp, a dual-booting software manager, Apple was saying to the world, ‘We realize some of you need to run Windows programs occasionally, and here’s a way to do it on your Mac,'” Jim Rossman reports for The Dallas Morning News. “The Boot Camp installation process actually creates a separate hard drive partition to hold the Windows operating system. The fact that the partition is created without wiping the user’s hard drive (on-the-fly repartitioning) is a first for Apple. But just because Apple is allowing users to run Windows on their Macs, don’t expect any additional help.’Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple’s superior hardware now that we use Intel processors,’ said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.”

“The Mac faithful had hardly caught their breath from the Boot Camp announcement when it was followed by another, equally startling software introduction called Parallels Desktop for Mac. Many years ago, a company called Connectix introduced a way to emulate a Windows PC inside a program on the Macintosh. Virtual PC was really slow, but it let users run most Windows programs on the Mac. Of course, it got better and faster with each release and with the introduction of faster Macs. In fact, Virtual PC became good enough that it caught the attention of Microsoft, which bought it,” Rossman reports. “Microsoft kept Virtual PC around for a while and actually did improve it, but stopped production when Apple introduced Macs running on Intel processors.
According to Microsoft’s Virtual PC Web site, ‘We are working with Apple to determine the feasibility of developing Virtual PC for Mac for Intel-based Macs. Virtual PC for Mac is highly dependent on the operating system and hardware, and will require additional development to run on Intel-based Macs.’ Parallels Desktop for Mac is almost identical to Virtual PC. It allows the user to run other operating systems virtually. This means the system can be running Windows XP, Linux and even Sun’s Solaris in separate windows.”

Rossman asks, “So in the course of a few days, users had two choices for running Windows on their Intel Macs. Which is the better choice?”

Full article here.

More info about Apple’s Boot Camp: http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/
More info about Parallels Desktop for Mac: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

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