David Sudjiman

I thought I can get rid of Windows domination after I bought my MacBook Pro. Apparently not. I need to use a Citrix client to connect to my office network and this Citrix session is encrypted and Citrix still has not figure out how to create a Citrix client on MAC that is capable using encrypted session. Duh!

Therefore, I need Windows just to connect to my office network and the options are BootCamp, Parallel, and VMware.

BootCamp is a bootloader that will give you the option to run Windows (or other OSes, probably) natively. It means, during the boot up, you will be asked which OS you want to run and you can’t use both at the same time. It also means that if you need to switch your MAC to Windows, you need restart your mac and choose Windows during boot up.

BootCamp is great for those who want to run Windows natively and It’s FREE.

Parallel is a program that you can run on top of your MAC that will emulate a blank PC to install a new OS. It means that you can run both OS, MAC and Windows (or other OSes, probably) at the same time. Parallel has been known as one of the pioneer for virtualization on MAC. Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac is available for US $79.99.

VMware has been know for a leading company that supports virtualization on Windows. It has virtualization product on Linux too. VMware Fusion is virtualization program similar to parallel and it’s available for free at the moment. If you interested, you can pre-order it for only US $ 39.99

I don’t really have particular preference why I choose VMware over parallel. However, I guess the option FREE suits me. I also choose VMware over Bootcamp is that I don’t want to reboot my MAC just to do my Windows.

The latest VMware Fusion version 1.0b4 (48339) is still in Beta version. However, it’s good enough for me to run my Windows.

Installation went flawless and it’s similar like you run VMware on Ubuntu Linux. Windows instantly recognized my CPU as Core 2 Duo T7700. The graphic card is recognized as VMware SVGA II with 16MB memory.

You can actually use the full screen mode and use the biggest resolution screen as you want as it is able to do 2360×1770 pixels. Well, I don’t really need that big resolution. All I want just proper full screen mode and it’s 1440×900 pixels.

Added: 2007-06-17T10:06:39+00:00

One of the feature that I like is Unity. It runs WindowsXP application “outside” VMWare working windows.