Is it possible to have both Parallels/Fusion AND Bootcamp?

Yes, you can have both on your system, but I can't answer your Windows licensing question.

 

Actually Parallels (not sure of Fusion) can use your Bootcamp partition as its image. So you would only need to install Windows onto Bootcamp and then point Parallels to that installation. It works great for your purpose.

 

Make sure you follow the instructions on Parallels web site in the knowlegebase for windows activation. it involves cloning the MAC address from the VM to the actual NIC in bootcamp.

Otherwise windows will ask to activate every time you switch between bootcamp and parallels.

 

actually, i would suggest a larger bootcamp partition

i used to run bootcamp and parallels on my MBP, and found that once i installed some larger software suites for 3d, i ran out of space for games. i have a 250 drive and i'd suggest probably 80 for the bootcamp.

even with that making the bootcamp drive ntfs (actually 40 gb would make it ntfs as well) macfuse+ntfs-3g is making things much easier these days.

 

Many, many people seem to have trouble with this and break activation repeatedly and have to end up calling Microsoft via the help line to get their Windows installations reactivated.

I ended up with three Windows licenses. One for Bootcamp on Macbook, one for Bootcamp on iMac, and one for Parallels virtual machine on iMac. This was the only way I could get it to work 100% reliably all of the time.

Although I followed the Parallels instructions for creating the virtual machine from Bootcamp, I would still end up breaking the activation on either the virtual machine or the Bootcamp machine. I don't know how Microsoft is seeing around the cloning, but it'd always eventually be seen as two different physical machines, and I couldn't deal with that. Sometimes when I need Windows, I need it instantly and reliably, and don't have time to fiddle with stuff...so I just bought a third license.

The original poster will also break his Office activation if he's not careful, and I'd recommend installing Office only on the virtual machine, and only installing his games on the Bootcamp machine.



At least, this is one dumb old man's experience with all of this.