Best way to run windows

If you want games, use Boot Camp.

If you want office applications, VMware Fusion or Parallels is fine

If you want 3D Performance but don't want to reboot into Boot Camp, Parallels

If you want stability and don't care about performance, VMware Fusion

I personally use Parallels for a Windows install on my OSX for personal use. It has some applications that are Windows Only, such as Quicken and Chinese programs.

For work, I use VMware Fusion because my scanner has issues under Parallels. Sometimes it'll connect, sometimes it won't. Fusion doesn't have this issue.

As long as there's enough ram and both products aren't fighting over a single USB device or whatnot, you can run both at the same time.

I use VMware, the only reason why I ever need to run Windows is to test the websties I make on IE.

Bootcamp.

Running the OS natively is the best IMO.

Where is Parallels on your poll?

Unless you are gaming, Virtual Machine it up.

Bootcamp, no compromises in performance

children said:

Bootcamp, no compromises in performance

Click to expand...

However, for apps that don't need that performance, the compromise is lost time rebooting, no access to data stored on your mac partition, etc.

Why do you need to use windows? If its absolutely necessary I recommend buying a windows pc.

throAU said:

However, for apps that don't need that performance, the compromise is lost time rebooting, no access to data stored on your mac partition, etc.

Click to expand...

Actually now you can actually access your Macintosh HD when you use Bootcamp, no need to install third party software to access your Mac drives..

To the OP, no question Bootcamp will give you native performance, If you plan on gaming Bootcamp is the way to go.. I'd also use Bootcamp If your doing processor or graphics heavy tasks..

But running software like Microsoft Word for example I'd say would be perfectly fine using VMware..

I think Bootcamp is TOP performer for games, but most of the time I also use Parrallel (Fusion until few month ago ) with good result , just lovered the graphich setting and all was working fine, graphics setting are the one that affect performance on VM as the videocard is emulated by software.

throAU said:

However, for apps that don't need that performance, the compromise is lost time rebooting, no access to data stored on your mac partition, etc.

Click to expand...

ofcourse
as for me, i use graphic and cpu intensive programs such as CAD, Revit and 3dsMax.. so native is best

Parallel (7) works fine for me. Don't have to reboot.

Where is a Parallels Desktop option? And why there are two options for VMware Fusion? Seems a little biased

I don't understand why four people in the poll voted for VMWare. Who would ever attempt gaming in a virtual machine environment?

Sesshy said:

I don't understand why four people in the poll voted for VMWare. Who would ever attempt gaming in a virtual machine environment?

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Whilst I didn't vote...

Conceivably, if you want to run OLD windows games, VMware or Parallels can be better than bare metal. Why?

If the game won't work in Windows 7 (only say, XP or Windows 98) then you will have a hell of a time trying to get boot camp to run that, and performance with VMware is "good enough" in that instance.

I use a combination of Boot Camp and Parallels (to virtualize my Boot Camp partition). I can boot into Windows if I need to do something that requires a lot of processing power; else, I'm able to run my Windows install in Parallels without rebooting.