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I’m looking at getting a Mac Book for the kids laptop. Anyone here have kids using them. My main concern is the ability to run windows software.

VMWare, currently in free beta, can run some DirectX 7 and 8 game titles. Parallels will start testing their full DirectX 9 virtualization in about two weeks.

If possible, I'd wait to see how they report the compatibility. Your kids will want games. And some of the educational titles require DirectX too.

If you're talking about just productivity software or simple educational software for young kids or encyclopedia software, those will nearly all run already. Pretty flawless too.

Using Coherence mode in Parallels, it mixes the Windows and Mac apps on the same screen, unified clipboard, etc. Using the upcoming SmartSelect feature in Parallels, you can set filetypes so that launching a .DOC or a .HTML file on either machine will invoke the appropriate app on either Mac or PC, system-wide. Very cool.

A lot of us thought we had to have Windows when we switched. What you find is that you need it a lot less than you think. But it's nice to keep your current software investment and then, as you please, upgrade to Mac versions of Office or to stay with your Windows versions.

It's software nirvana basically. Toss in running Sun's Solaris and Linux just for fun. And Boot Camp for any of the Windows DirectX games for free. With enough RAM, it's a do-anything kind of machine.

I feel sorry for your kids though. Once you buy it and try it out, they might never get another chance to use it.

["Honey, we bought that Mac for the kids. Now you just let them use it for once!"]