I've had a search throught the forum pages but can't find exactly what I'm looking for......I have been using the various versions of parallels for some time without any problems. I'm not a big user of Windows anymore, no games etc, just the odd program that I need from time to time. I read occasionally of people running parallels through bootcamp (or is it vice versa??) Could someone explain the advantages of this, is it maybe speed or driver availability and how it should be set up. Thanks.....
I used Boot Camp and Parallels together. I have just decided to use only Parallels (Windows XP pro), considering that for occasionnal use Boot Camp had no real superiority over Parallels, except if you want to play PC games. For work use (Microsoft Access for example, or testing compatibility of Powerpoint presentations made with Office for Mac, or any other specific Windows applications), Parallels is excellent, runs fast, very fast indeed if you have at least 2GB ram on your Mac. I can even run specific PC network applications in my institution faster than the PC's of my colleagues ! I bought the 3.0 upgrade, it's the same, I did not try to install PC games because it's not my problem, it runs better for moving files from MAC desktop to PC desktop and vice et versa, USB devices run correctly (I had some problems with previous versions of Parallels). Well, I think that Boot Camp is obsolete when you considerer the few advantages you have when you boot from your Boot Camp partition and the numerous drawbacks (no file sharing with the mac partition). The real drawback (for me) of Parallels is that there is no firewire connectivity. Best regards from a french user.
Using Bootcamp requires disc partitioning (inneficient use of space and always slightly intimidating to set up - although Apple have made it pretty simple), means that you have to reboot to change operating systems and possibly buy/install extra software to read/write Mac discs from Windows and vice versa. However, its the only way to let windows get full use of your computer's hardware including 3D acceleration, multicore processors and all the RAM (well, only the first 2GB at the mo, but thats more than most users could allocate to parallels). Parallels is more than adequate - and far more convenient than bootcamp - for running most Windows software - especially office/productivity and 2D graphics stuff. However, that leaves some people in the position of preferring to use Parallels day-to-day but occasionally needing Bootcamp for running, er, demanding professional real-time visualization tools (there's one called "Supreme Commander" that I'm wasting a lot of time on at the moment ) That means installing windows - and all your other apps- once under BootCamp and again under parallels - with the consequent waste of disc space and the possibility of having to buy second copies of windows and other apps because of the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned product activation systems. This is where "bootcamp on parallels" comes in - it simply lets you run the copy of windows you installed under bootcamp (along with access to any files and other applications from bootcamp) within parallels. You won't get any of the performance and compatibility advantages of BootCamp - just the convience of only having one installation and access to the same files in both "worlds". The downside is that you loose the suspend/resume functionality in parallels (otheriwse, if you slept parallels then ran bootcamp things could get corrupted). If you have survived thus far without bootcamp then I wouldn't worry about it. I prefer to bite the bullet and run two windows installations.
