Becoming a Mac

One of the great benefits of purchasing a Mac with OS X Leopard is that the system is designed to allow you to effectively have two computers in one. Every Mac running OS X is bundled with a piece of software called "Boot Camp" which allows you to install Windows on your Mac and use all the standard software you may be using on a Windows PC.

 Boot Camp for Mac OS X Leopard

Apple or Command KeyBoot Camp works by allowing your Mac to create a partition on the hard drive.  Essentially, sectioning off a part of your hard drive that will be dedicated to the Windows operating system.  Once this is done, you can install Windows into that partition.  Once this is completed then at startup by holding down the command key will be presented the option to choose which operating system, Windows or Mac, to boot up.

Some of the obvious benefits to someone switching from PC to Mac is that with Boot Camp you can have the "comfort" of knowing, if there is some critical piece of software on your PC that may not be compatible to run on the Mac then all you have to do is use Boot Camp to start up Windows and there it is.  However, there are some down-sides to this as well.  For instance, you have to keep your files essentially separate- with Boot Camp its Windows OR MAC OS.  You cannot switch between the two without restarting the computer.  The other factor is that you need to own a CD or DVD with Windows license in order to install Windows on Mac with Boot Camp, which may require a separate purchase of the latest Windows OS, luckily Boot Camp is included with Mac OS X for free.

Windows inside of Mac OS XNow for those of you that are thinking, "That sounds fine, but it is a hassle to have to reboot just to use one piece of software then reboot again to get to your Mac OS!" Fear not, because there is another option.  You can install a Windows emulator or virtual machine.  These programs allow you to truly have the best of both worlds. You can boot up your Mac as normal and when you need to run a Windows software program all you have to do is launch the virtual machine and Windows is literally running at the same time as the Mac OS in a separate window.  There are two main company's with software programs that allow you to run Windows "inside" of your Mac OS and the programs they offer are called: Parallels and VMWare Fusion.  

For more information on VMWare Fusion and Paralles visit this article: "Virtually Tied: Parallels Desktop vs VMWare Fusion."  It does a really great job of describing the systems and comparing the ups and downs of each.