A brief note about "virtualization" a la Parallels:
This ain't your father's virtualization. If you've ever used Virtual PC, it's similar only in convenience. But in performance it's in a whole other universe, effectively redefining what virtualization means.
In the olden days, virtualization had to take place at the lowest levels, translating every machine instruction one by one, millions of times per second, from the Intel instruction set Windows is written for to the PPC set it was running on under Virtual PC.
But on Intel Macs, there's really very little being translated at all. Machine instructions simply get passed right through to the Intel processor, and only a small handful of operations regarding peripheral devices (CD, Internet, etc.) require any remapping at all.
So in terms of compatibility testing I doubt there's much difference between Parallels and Boot Camp. But in terms of convenience they couldn't be father apart:
The one thing Parallels does that's similar to Virtual PC is allow folders to be shared between the native Mac OS and the Windows OS running inside of it. This means you can easily assign a development folder to be shared with Parallels, and work on it in either OS simultaneously. You can make your builds on either OS and run them in the other -- no reboot necessary. You can move from one OS to another effortlessly, without stopping anything you're doing in either.
Sharing folders and running the OSes simultaneously means an order-of-magnitude productivity boost over the quit-reboot-start-over routine required with Boot Camp.
Parallels is so superior in terms of workflow I'll gladly put myself out on this limb, just as I did years ago when I first suggested Apple would one day switch to Intel: I predict that not too long from now Apple will acquire Parallels, and ditch Boot Camp altogether. Stranger things have happened....
-- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___________________________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
