Parallels Workstation

Parallels workstation is a virtual-machine solution (not dual boot like a Boot Camp solution) for Mac:Intel that is using the Intel’s chips hardware support for virtualization (and unlike current version of Virtual PC that runs on a ppc mac and emulates the intel chip, Parallels use the intel chip directly). MacWorld has a review of Parallels including a video to demonstrate different Windows tasks within Mac OS X (be aware of the set of extra tools from Parallels that you can install, including shared clipboard). [via]

This article demonstrate OpenStep 4.2 (do you know where OS X came from?) on a MacBook Pro at blazing speed and with a high resolution, true-color display. [via]

At first, using Paralells to run Windows XP (and other OSes) in parallel with OS X seemed tempting. But after reading the reviews and digging into the wast amount of experiences documented with both Parallels and Boot Camp, I think I will try Boot Camp first. In Boot Camp real disk partitions are used (not virtual disks) and the support for different HW seems more mature (both solutions are still tagged beta). I will create a 5GB FAT file system for the Windows partition (Mac OS X can read/write it), and I will use MacDrive to access the Mac partition (HFS+) from Windows XP (MacDrive will not work from Paralells Workstation because you can not see the Mac partition from your virtual machine).

Update: If you are not happy with the mapping of the mac keyboard in Parallels this tips might help you. [via]

Update: PD Tweaker is an Application Enhancer (APE) plugin that addresses a few shortcomings in Parallels Desktop 1.0 for Intel-based Macintoshes. It has two major features which can be enabled separately: (i) optimizes caching for HDD and SAV files and (ii) always writes HDD and SAV files all the way to disk. [via]

April 20 2006 (aa)