I apologize if you feel this is covered elsewhere. There's a lot of info here on this forum, but I thought getting a bit more specific about my needs, might bring more specific answers. I am not a Parallels wiz, nor do I want to be. It's a tool that allows me to Windows development on my Mac and as long as I have some basic, reliable functionality, I'm happy. Model Name: iMac Model Identifier: iMac11,3 Processor Name: Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 4 L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 8 MB Memory: 16 GB Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s Boot ROM Version: IM112.0057.B00 SMC Version (system): 1.59f2 Serial Number (system): QP03043FGRQ Hardware UUID: 2F22EF68-DE5C-59F7-A948-5EBA4BF1B2D8 I'm currently at 10.6.8 / Parallels 7 (EyeTV is the only 'specialized' app running) My VM is Windows 7 / Visual Studio 2010 / Sql Server 2012 All works well. I'm considering an update to Lion and Parallels 8, simply because I don't like getting too far behind in versions in software. Based on the above, would anyone have any 'watch out for this' or 'be aware this won't work' advice for me before I tackle this ? I just don't want to open a can of worms. Honestly, it all works fine now, but I just hate getting too far behind - it's more a pet peeve of mine than any concrete reasoning Thanks a lot JimInFL