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Article by Tony Lawrence
Source: http://aplawrence.com/


As regular readers here know, I'm a big fan of virtualization. I really couldn't function without being able to run virtual machines. This technology lets me support customers who run operating systems I don't use, lets me test scripts and programs on different platforms and lets me stay current with operating system knowledge. Before virtualization I had to have a big multi-boot machine with numerous partitions - annoying and difficult to manage. Now I have everything I need: SCO, Windows XP, Vista, Ubuntu, RedHat, Centos and much more all ready to start up at the click of a mouse.

You can have all this too. If you are an Intel Mac owner, you have a pile of choices: you can use Boot Camp, Parallels, VMware Fusion 2, VirtualBox.. and a few other less well known solutions. Which to use?

Well, other than the cost of buying Parallels and Fusion 2 (VirtualBox is free), there's nothing stopping you from trying all of them. That's what I've done, but you may not want to go to all that trouble and expense. That's where Joe Kissell's "Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac, Third Edition" comes in.

Written in February of 2009, this book covers Boot Camp, Fusion 2, Parallels and VirtualBox fully, comparing features and providing troubleshooting hints and tips. There's also coverage of Wine, Darwine, Crossover and Cider - these are programs that let you run some Windows apps without installing Windows at all.