I've been using VMware for years with winxp and win7 pro. Both work flawlessly and crash less than my dedicated office Pc with win7. And with my retina, it runs fast! In my work world I need both and feel that this is an impressive option. You pay more for the retina, but it's two in one and damned good at it. I initially ran bootcamp which was even faster, but liked having the virtual window and ability to jump back and forth between mac os and win without a reboot. I'm not a gamer, so no need for that last bit of performance.