No, you don't have to have BootCamp to run Parallels or Fusion on a Mac... but it is a good idea. BootCamp is currently a free Beta and will be included with Leopard. BootCamp allows you to live partition an existing HFS+ formatted hard drive into the Mac and a Windows partition where you can install Windows. It also adds the necessary Windows drivers to a newly created Windows install disk. Parallels and Fusion can both access the BootCamp created Windows partition.
With BootCamp you can select whether to boot into Windows or Mac OSX at startup. When running a Mac as a Windows PC under Bootcamp the Windows installation is as fast or faster than a Windows only machine with the same processor. It IS a Windows box. However, to switch between OSes, you have to reboot and start-up from the BootCamp created Windows partition.
Parallels and Fusion operate Windows within a sandboxed window under OSX and switching is transparent. Files and or clippings can be dragged and dropped between OSes. There is about a 5% lower speed to Windows when operated in this manner compared to BootCamp's approach. It will still be faster than most low-end Windows boxes. Both Parallels and Fusion allow other OSes plus Windows to be run simultaneously under virtualization on OSX.
Apple’s new kick-butt file system pushes onMicrosoft is TOAST !
Mac OS X will now be state of the art 64 bit full certified Unix
with state of the art file system
Thanks again for your info and explanations. Computing is getting more interesting isn’t it?
I suppose in the future all computers will run most os’s and apps seamlessly and instantly without hickups or questions. Someday there will just be generic computing devices planted in your body that will supply information directly to your brain just by thinking about it.
I vote for Fusion, which I bought, mainly because Parallels doesn’t do 64-bit or SMP for the client OS. But it would be hard to choose which one to buy if you didn’t want either of those.