I have RC2 of Parallels installed and have been running XP as the guest OS. As a software developer, I need to run Vista AND XP but unsure how to proceed. I want to retain my current XP VM, install Vista as a separate VM and just install a few apps in Vista that I need for testing. I will continue to do the bulk of my development in XP for the next year or so. Once there is more widespread Vista adoption, I will move more of my development apps to Visa. Knowing that, what version should I purchase and install. I've got a MBP 2.33, 120gig hard drive, and 2 gig of RAM.
You need either the Vista Business or Vista Ultimate version to be legal as far as running in a Virtual Environment. If you don't want to lose your current XP VM, my advice is to purchase an OEM version of Vista Business or Ultimate from a place like NewEgg.com. I paid $149 for an OEM Vista Business vs. 199 (elsewhere) for a Business Upgrade. The authorization procedure appears to be much more restrictive than before and I need to be able to upgrade an existing XP install on a Dell as well as install a clean Vista VM on my Mac Pro. The OEM purchase is the only affordable way to get a non-upgrade version of Vista inexpensively. You can also purchase an OEM version of Vista Ultimate for 199 from NewEgg.
I have XP and Vista running. I'm in the process of migrating to Vista, but I'm still using XP as my main OS. I just created a new virtual machine and did a clean install of Vista Ultimate. I boot it up when I need to. If you can afford it, an MSDN professional subscription will get you 3 MS operating systems of your choice. Vista Ultimate is included and for whatever reason, doesn't even seem to count towards the 3. My MSDN had actually expired and I still got Vista Ultimate with legit activation key. Each MSDN key is good supposedly for 10 activations.
