Or why it just might not...that's up to the other, more experienced techies out there to decide. Here is the reason why: Parallels 3.0. Now, here is the reason why not: you still have to shell out a large quantity of money to purchase a valid copy of Windows (oddly enough, it doesn't say that Windows Vista Home Premium is usable...I wonder if that was just a simple oversight or not). So, to the $79 initial price you must also add at least $200 more. That is not very cost effective (in my opinion). It does give the option to play games using 3d accelerated graphics. The other, more compelling reason to use it is quite simple...as long as your program runs on the version of Windows that you have installed under Parallels, you can use it (there is intelligent program selection). There are plenty of great features that make an interesting "killer app". The only question is this...will it continue to experience sometimes severe performance hits? Only time will tell.
Of similar interest is the future release of VMWare Fusion. This is very similar to Parallels 3.0 yet doesn't seem to suffer from some of the performance issues that Parallels has. Interestingly enough, you are still stuck with Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate (not with Home Premium). I wonder why that is. Maybe it is because of certain "enterprise" features that Home doesn't have built in. Maybe, maybe not. It seems that the price point for virtual machine technology is $79.
The weirdest thing is that most of the reviews say that you are better off using Apple's BootCamp software. This allows you to dual-boot between Mac OS X and Windows. Now, that is a cludgy solution to the problem, at least as I see it. You see, I feel that you shouldn't have to choose which operating system you use to open a file. You should be able to run any program from within Mac OSX without having to reboot. Period. Many's the time that I've been doing something in Linux or Mac and had to either reboot the computer (from Linux) or move to another computer (from Mac) just to be able to run a particular program under Windows (because it wasn't supported under either Linux or Mac). That is a stupid thing to have to do.
When it comes to one of my favorite issues, choice, the Mac OS X running a virtual machine would make the ideal solution. Due to certain limitations that Apple has built-in to the Mac operating system you can only run Mac OS X on Apple hardware (let's face it, Mac hardware is generally better designed and much "prettier" than most other traditional PC designs). So, if you paired the Mac OS X machine with a virtual machine running your choice of Windows, Linux, and Solaris you would then be able to decide which program to run regardless of OS. Thus, if a program offers the feature set you need you simply buy it or download it and then use it...all from the same computer without having to reboot! Glory be, that is awesome. As an example, you could run Frozen Bubble from within the Linux vm (since that is the os that they support with the most up-to-date builds), IMT Viewer 6+ from within the Windows vm (that's a program that we use in the USAF for filling in electronic forms), and MacSword directly from the Mac...all at the same time. Makes me giggle like a little school girl! Yippee!
I so want an Apple MacBook Pro! Maybe, one of these days, I'll put the necessary scratch together and buy one. I have learned one thing, though, don't buy a computer off of eBay unless it is new. That will save you from buying a bum piece of equipment. Maybe, once I've finished a few more of my stories and sold them, I will be able to put one together. Here's to hoping!
Cheers
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