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I'm considering getting an Apple laptop, but I will continue to use Windows frequently. Dual-booting is a pain, but virtualization has its own issues, so I'd like to keep a foot in both camps if possible. To accomplish this, I'm thinking of installing Windows 7 on a Boot Camp partition, and sharing that partition with either VMware or Parallels (the two main virtualization programs for Mac OS X that I'm aware of), so that I can use Windows in an integrated, virtualized environment from Mac OS X while preserving of option of booting into Windows directly when needed.
Basically, I'd have two use-cases for my single Windows installation: 1) boot into Windows directly using Boot Camp and 2) boot Windows alongside Mac OS X using a virtual machine. I've seen a lot of questions about migrating completely from one to another, but I want to continue to use both in parallel.
I have a few questions regarding this:
- Which program would be better for this, VMware or Parallels?
- How painless would the transition between the different environments be? Would I encounter any problems or annoying chores (i.e. hardware reconfiguration) when I switch from booting via the virtual machine to booting via Boot Camp and vice versa?
- Is the virtualized hardware in a VMware or Parallels environment similar to the hardware on the actual machine?
- Are there any tricks to making this a workable solution?
- Is there any documentation out there to describe how to do this (booting the same partition from Boot Camp and a virtualization solution) in the best way possible (everything I've found concerns one-way migration)?
- Any general remarks about this sort of setup are welcome.
In #3, I'm referring to the interface provided by the virtualization layer (i.e. is it emulating the hardware on the Macbook or generic PC hardware). I'm less concerned about performance and more concerned about having to futz with it all the time to keep it going. – Kaypro II – 2011-08-01T21:45:28.787
If the Q is basically will you have to install different drivers over and over again, that's a solid no. The virtual layer emulates in a consistent manner - it won't change on you unexpectedly. – mbb – 2011-08-02T13:29:31.650
Of course. But I asking about when I switch between booting via the VM and booting via Boot Camp. I would assume there's no virtual layer with boot camp, but I could be wrong. If the VM emulates different hardware than is on the machine, Windows might get fussy. I want to know how Windows will behave in this scenario. Will it sit and reconfigure all the peripherals (perhaps requiring me to reconfigure any custom settings) each time I switch booting methods? Stuff like that. – Kaypro II – 2011-08-02T14:54:41.187