Parallels Desktop gives Mac users the ability to run Windows, Linux or any other operating system and their critical applications at the same time as Mac OS X on any Intel-powered Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, MacBook or MacBook Pro. ![]() Only suckers pay sticker price for a new Windows PC or Mac If you're patient and willing to do some research, you can save hundreds of dollars and get a more powerful configuration than you ever dreamed possible. You can run Windows on a Mac. That's a big selling point for Apple, which gives this feature a marquee position on its page. Apple pitches it as the way to run 'specialty software.' You know, 'that one Windows application. That's not available for the Mac.' That's actually a pretty compelling pitch for me. I have a handful of Windows programs that don't have Mac alternatives, and I have. So if a virtual machine can handle both Windows and OS X apps gracefully, I would have a much easier time moving back and forth. On the Mac, I originally installed Windows 7. But after a recent memory and disk upgrade I've been looking at virtualization software for OS X, which allows me to run Windows without having to first shut down OS X. ![]() It's not exactly seamless, but it works. Before you try it, though, you should learn about the costs--some of them not so obvious at first glance. There's the monetary cost of software, of course, but there are also some hidden performance costs. In this post I discuss both. The cost of software. You can pay for virtualization software or find a free alternative, but Windows itself isn't free. And if your can't-live-without it Windows app is Microsoft Office or an accounting program or a point-of-sale system, well, you have to pay for that too. Let's run the tape: • Windows 7 Professional $250 Under Windows license terms, the only option a normal consumer has for Windows 7 in a VM on a Mac is what's called a Full Packaged Product (FPP) license. (Upgrades are only allowed if you are replacing the installed copy of OS X or a previous version of Windows installed in a VM. OEM copies are allowed only on new physical hardware.) At the Microsoft Store, costs $300. Richard himber band members. You can find it discounted from legitimate resellers for roughly $250, so let's use that price. • Virtualization software $0-80 I've been testing. A full license for either one costs $80. I've been able to find discounts that take the cost into the sub-$60 range. You can purchase Minecraft Java edition from. It's at least $300 if you use commercial virtualization software, and possibly much more if you need to pay for additional licenses for Windows apps. The hidden performance costs What I found even more interesting was the decrease in performance that you get when you run Windows on Apple hardware. To measure performance, I looked at the raw data that Windows captures when you run the Windows System Assessment tool (WinSAT.exe). You can look at the five numbers that make up the Windows Experience Index (WEI), but the detailed numbers are much more illuminating. I looked at these numbers on my late-2009 Mac Mini, with a decent Core 2 Duo CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a 7200RPM Seagate Momentus XT hybrid disk.
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