Parallels 7 Setup

[hothatch01]

Hi all.

i am completly new to parallels and dont actualy own a copy as of yet as i just want to check out a few things first. My question is that on my MBP i use OS Lion 95% of the time and run Windows 7 in bootcamp for the odd game here and there. If i Move to parallels instead of using Bootcamp. will i have to delete My currrent Windows partition of can it tap into it and just carry on as normal.

Any help will be greatly recieved as i cant find the anser to this question anywhere.

Thanks

 

[JerB]

You can install Parallels on your Mac to use your Boot Camp partition as the boot environment. This means that you can boot that instance of Windows native using Boot Camp, or you can boot a virtual machine from it while running MacOS. One observation I have made over tha last 4-5 years I have been using Parallels and MacOS is that a virtual machine running on a Boot Camp partition seems slower than one that is "pure virtual". I never got to the point where I would perform any performance benchmarks to prove this, but I have move to using "pure virtual" instances of Windows 7 on my newest MacBook Pro.

If you aren't certain what I mean by "pure virtual", I am referring to a Parallels machine which only exists in the virtual environment and does not use a Boot Camp partition.