Some guidance deciding!

[seniorgeek]

I am a new new Imac user, coming from a long time Windows user, I am enjoying my new iMac but I need to install Windows on it to use Microsoft Visual Web Developer. I have been going back to my custom built Windows machine frequently for VWD, I have a buyer for the Windows system and need to move on this soon.

I bought numbers and installed my Lightroom on my iMac, using Mail instead of Outlook, use Jalbum for the Mac and iTunes instad of Media Player, the only Windows applications I need are Visual Web Developer Express and Microsoft Access. No real need for Word or PowerPoint, I do own Office 2007.

I own a licensed copy of Vista which I did temporarily install on my iMac using Virtual Box and it worked ok, but I was not very impressed and uninstalled both applications, I don't think I allowed enough space. My decision I need to make is should I buy VMware Fusion or Parallels, for $89.00 and reinstall Vista or buy an OEM W7 for $99.99 and use Bootcamp. I probably would not need to use VWD more than a couple time a week.

Opinions requested, thanks.

 

[pizzafordinna]

I would get Windows 7 firstly. It's a much better operating system compared to Vista and isn't as much of a resource hog which is good if your going to use a virtual machine.

Second I prefer using bootcamp, you can put Windows 7 on using bootcamp but to access it you have to turn off your computer every time you want to switch OS's which can get annoying.

Which is why I use Parallels in tandem with bootcamp. Parallels can access your Bootcamp partition so you can be running both OS's at the same time, but you also can run them separate without Parallels.

In a recent extensive benchmark testing of Parallels vs. VMware Fusion the testers quoted "Parallels Desktop 6 beat VMware Fusion 3.1 in 84% of the general tests we ran"