Virtual Box

Cant speak for the Lion part yet- haven't tried. But Virtualbox works very well as long as you don't need the invisible integration features that parallels and VMware provide. It supports shared folders though, which was the most important part for me.

I have Linux Ubuntu and Windows XP and it works nice. Last time I virtualized Widows I was running SL, so I don't if Lion makes a difference here or not.

Mrguidogenio said:

I have Linux Ubuntu and Windows XP and it works nice. Last time I virtualized Widows I was running SL, so I don't if Lion makes a difference here or not.

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I just used virtualbox in Lion yesterday, running windows 7, on my late 2011 mbp 8.1 and it is working without any problems whatsoever

maril1111 said:

I just used virtualbox in Lion yesterday, running windows 7, on my late 2011 mbp 8.1 and it is working without any problems whatsoever

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Glad to know

I have tried vmware fusion and virtualbox and haven't really noticed a difference in speed between the two, and virtualbox is free

Windows xp worked really well under SL, can't speak for lion yet tho. I used it all the time to play rollercoaster tycoon and other windows games that couldn't run on a Mac. Should be able to do what you need pretty easily. I found that having at least 4gb of RAM really helps when virtualizing though.

I've bounced between trials of VMWare and Parallels, and just found VirtualBox yesterday. It works just as well (for what I do) as the two paid ones.

The only downside would be gaming, as I've read that it really doesn't do a good job with the biggie 3d games. But I have yet to try it, so I can't comment. I only have Windows for if something comes along during school that I need to use Windows for.

Make sure you use the new version, 4.1, as I know it fixed a few Lion bugs.

It's working great here on Lion, A+!