One thing you need to recognize quicky is that this forum is where people with problems come. People with no problems are off using the tool or trying to help with the problems here. That includes me. I check in from time to time to see if there's anything new to see.
As for integrating Boot Camp and Parallels, we're talking about a lot of beta code (including Vista, and the new Mac Pro's). Each organization has proprietary code they're working on. Each is a moving target - how can anyone propose there be any integration? Nothing is finished, the API's are subject to change, and each has it's one target buyer/user. And because not all is public knowledge, there is a lot of discovery going on.
Think about this - with Boot Camp the Windows installation is based on actual hardware Windows's installer can examine and query. In a VM the hardware is virtualized - the guest OS never sees the real thing. It may be an exact replication - or it may be entirely different from the physical hardware (it is which is why you don't have Firewire in Parallels yet). So unless Parallels perfectly replicates the physical hardware in the VM you won't be able to load a Boot Camp OS installation. This is like pulling a bootable disk from a Dell pc and installing it in a Compaq pc and expecting it to boot and run. Chances of that happening? My guess is zero.
When you get past the installation and PD tools stuff and actually start using it you'll be quite happy with it. And you will find there are some incompatibilities. There may even be some that are impossible to overcome. Microsoft may even decide they don't like everyone running the pride of their fleet in a window and so find a way to make it non-installable. I went through this once before with OS/2 and Windows 3.1, so nothing will suprise me. What I've found is that if one OS cannot do a particular thing then another OS can. Point being, if you insist that Windows in a VM do everything Windows in Boot Camp can do then you're likely to be frustrated. VM's can take you only so far. But if you allow both OS X and Windows to co-exist and accept that you may need to flip between screens to get the job done then you'll be happier.
And just because it's so damn cool and lets you easily switch between various running VM's, get and install this: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12682
Here's the universal version: http://www.arenasoftware.com/grepsoft/DesktopManagerUB-0.5.3.dmg
dp
Last edited: Oct 10, 2006