How broad is the compatibility of Parallels, if I am going to be running somewhat obscure math applications would I be better of partitioning my hard drive or purchasing this product? Thanks All!
The math applications would need to be super evil to not work on Parallels. You could do both and partition your hard drive and use the partition as the virtual disk for Parallels.
So in general parallels does not have a set list of programs that it runs, rather it just does its best on all windows programs? Why would I want to partition my drive if i don't need to, isn't that the point of parallels?
Correct. Wine (e.g. Crossover) has a set list of programs that it will run but virtualization products like Parallels Desktop do not. That doesn't mean everything will work on Parallels Desktop. For example, you can't run virtualization products in a virtual machine. If you install Windows to a partition, then you can boot your Mac into Windows for slightly increased performance (useful for some games).
Right, because you would only be installing it once (using Boot Camp Assistant in the /Applications/Utilities folder).
So I can't install one copy of windows in parallels and then later decide to partition my disk if my needs change?
It might be possible. I haven't tried it before. It would be like moving Windows from one PC to another PC that has different hardware. You need to be able to somehow clone Windows from the virtual hard drive partition to the Boot Camp partition then somehow repair the Boot Camp partition so that it will boot with the Mac hardware. Maybe Parallels Transporter can do the cloning and if it doesn't boot then maybe Windows repair from the Windows installer disk will fix it.
