I am getting a Vista box for my day trading at the office but want to try Windows emulation first on my Mac Tower..

What is the best way to run windows on the Mac and can/should I try for Vista or Windows XP?

TIA

 

And just to add a little, if you don't mind. I'm trying to access a secure area associated with work and neither safari nor firefox are supported. Here is a comment from a french guy:

You have to use a virtual machine setup in order to run Windows. I use VMware.

Is this the same question or solution as Mark wants?

Thanks.

 

There are two ways to go about it-- emulation, meaning running a copy of Windows on top of OS X, the most common solutions for which are either Parallels or VMware-- or running Windows natively using Boot Camp.

If you just need IE, Parallels is probably the way to go. It'll run most software just fine in emulation, and when windows craps all over itself, you just close the app and restart it.

If you need Windows apps that actively access a lot of system hardware (e.g. audio/video stuff, etc), you may need to run it natively, in which case you just set up a dual boot with Boot Camp.

Use XP. Vista is an unimaginable pile of crap. (Not that XP isn't, but less so)

 

I use Bootcamp. You need a poop-ton of memory to run two OSes AND apps at the sametime and my Blackbook (sorry, African-Americanbook) only supports 2GB. The drawback is you have to reboot to get into Windows.

Could you run Windows IE in X with Crossover? I haven't played with that much but supposedly it lets you run smaller Windows programs within OS X.

 

haha Simba, don't mince words. I've always considered Window's a bit of a science project that is endlessly complex and not intuitive...In some ways I found as the Mac OS has progressed it has gotten less intuitive for me..

I really only need Window's for some stock trading software..My Mac Tower is loaded with ram, etc.

I guess I'll try Bootcamp this weekend with XP, don't need Vista on that computer. Bad enough to put any Windows product on it..

 

For what you are doing...I would go the Parallels route (you can get a bundle from macupdate with a bunch of software including parallels for $49). It is so much easier to set-up than bootcamp (unless you are setting up the computer at the start and have partitioned it).

 

buy a pc bc deep down you know I love men.