Parallels does the same thing as VMWare Fusion but has chosen to not
make their UI accessible, even in the latest version. So VMWare is
pretty much it. There is also the free VirtualBox software which does
the same thing. It's UI is also not accessible but it does have a
command-line interface you can use from Terminal to do a lot of things.
As you surmised, the virtualized Windows environment works just like a
real Windows box, including susceptibility to viruses. So it can be a
bit of an outlay of cash to set up a virtual machine by the time you buy
a copy of Windows, Office and virus software. Still cheaper than a real
PC but far from free. One advantage of the VMWare stuff is they use the
same format for their various platforms, so you could copy your virtual
machine to a Windows or Linux box and run it under VMWare there. It's
also a nice way to test Windows stuff. You keep a clean install VMWare
image and then make a copy to install something on. If it blows up you
just throw the copy in the trash and make a new one. They also have
something called Snapshots which lets you mark a point in time so you
can revert back to it. Probably the more efficient way to do things
rather than clone the whole VM file, but I've never got around to
playing with it.
CB
On 5/2/12 3:23 PM, Will Cummings wrote:
Thanks for the feedback so quickly!
@ Eugenia - thanks for the tips! I actually hadn't thought about
porting .pdf's onto my iphone for reading, but that could be very
useful for catching up on reading when on the bus or travelling. I
will have to experiment some.
@ Chris - I had heard about BootCamp and Parallels, but not VMWare
Fusion. I was planning on setting up one of these options, if only to
have a fallback as I learned the Mac environment. My hope in
switching was to avoid some of the hassles of the Windows environment
(viruses and security issues mostly), which I'm assuming would be
equally applicable in BootCamp, etc no? And yes, I wouldn't want to
fall into the trap of booting into Windows and not really learning the
Mac OS.
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