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Virtual Windows

I spent the entire afternoon installing Windows XP Pro in Parallels as a Virtual Machine. Installing Windows on any PC takes a good bit of time, but as a VM, it seemed a little quicker, by a few minutes.  As long as I only have Parallels running on the OS X side, and put XP in full screen mode, it’s pretty much like having a Windows lappy.  I installed the free developer tools so I can do .Net programming and I installed an old version of Office 2000 that I purchased a million years ago when I was a loyal Windows user.

I mostly use the Windows VM for when I need to check if my web sites work with IE7 or to play with Visual Studio.  Both situations are rare.  I need to get ClamWin installed on it, so I don’t get every virus around.  But really, the thing is only on for short amounts of time and I don’t surf or do email on it.

I do like how Parallels lets you access your home folder on the OS X side from the Windows XP VM.  That’s way cool.

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