Hi all, I am a new member, so a big helloooo to you all and I am a complete novice trying to decide whether to install Parallels. I have to use SPSS (a stats package) soon for some research, however SPSS claim that the current Mac OS version is not compatible with Intel core duo machines. Therefore I would be interested in using Parallels to host the PC version of SPSS instead, however despite reading the Parallels manual, I am still not clear whether I need to install a version of Windows to host SPSS in this way. What does everybody think? Anyone with a similar problem? Tara.
Currently, Mac OS/X works fine with intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors. Parallels works fine on them and allows you to run Windows programs under OSX. The way Parallels works, it will use one of the cores to run windows, and it will use the other core to run OSX (which is heavily used by the windows virtual machine.) I see no reason it would not work for you. You can do a free trial download of Parallels to test this, but yes you would need to install Windows. Windows does not come packaged with Parallels. If your objective is to use your Mac while conveniently running SPSS at the same time, Parallels is the answer. If your objective is to have the fastest running SPSS possible, you could try Apple's Bootcamp. You would still have to install Windows under bootcamp. It would have native Windows performance, but to switch to your Mac apps, you would have to re-boot, so you give up a lot of convenience. Hope that helps.
Also, do you see the Orange Bar above your post? One of the options is "Search". You can search on SPSS and find all posts on this topic.
