I purchased my MacBook Air yesterday and have installed Parallels 9 as I need to run Microsoft Project and am also doing an Open University degree and they do not have Mac versions of their DVD Roms. So the Mac does not have a version of Windows currently. I am not a "system builder" so do I still buy an OEM version? And then the other questions: 32bit or 64bit for my Mac? Do I buy the OEM version? I've seen some comments about .exe files networking in Mac. I am a Mac novice so how do I get round this for windows? Finally - what do I buy?? I'm certain this has been covered in loads of threads before but please Help me out.
Unless you you have a previous copy of Windows, you have no choice but to purchase an OEM version. As to 32bit or 64bit, it depends on how much RAM and SSD space you have in the Macbook Air. 32bit will use somewhat less space than 64bit. Personally, I have two Win8 VMs and they are both 64 bit. However. both machines have 16Gig of RAM. Since my machines are a Mini Server and a Macbook Pro, drive space is not an issue.
When I ordered the upgrade edition of Windows 8 Pro, both the 32-bit and 64-bit DVDs were included. It would be nice if Microsoft would make this clear to customers beforehand to avoid confusion. I hope everything worked out for you!
