Introduction: Sleeping with the Enemy

I confess. I've slept with the enemy for a long time. Although my heart and passion has always been with Macs, my wallet has dictated collaboration with the enemy. For a long time, I've had and used Windows PCs in order to earn income because I couldn't run all the software I needed to on my Mac. So, I had a not-so-beloved (AKA a necessary evil) Windows PC on my desk right next to my beloved Mac. I lived in both worlds.

With the rise of the Intel Macs, sleeping with the enemy isn't as difficult as it once was. Instead of purchasing and maintaining Windows hardware, you can now run Windows on a Mac. The even better news is that Windows performs on a Mac as well as or better than it does on Windows hardware, which is to say as good as Windows gets (hey, Windows still isn't the Mac OS!).

This is ideal when you have to run some Windows applications, but can do most of what you need to under Mac OS X. You can have the best of both operating systems and easily live in whichever world you need to at any point in time.

There are two basic ways to run Windows on a Mac. One transforms the Mac into a Windows PC (Apple's Boot Camp). The other involves running Windows in a virtual machine under a Mac application controlled by the Finder. Each method has its pros and cons, and each will let you use Windows when you need to.

The purpose of this book is to provide you with the information you need to run Windows using either (or both) of these methods. It will also help you choose which method to try first, but only you will be able to decide which is best for you. I've organized the book into two major parts. In Part I, you'll learn about the Boot Camp option. In Part II, the virtualization approach will be in focus.

You do need to have a couple of things to be able to use either method. One is a Mac with an Intel processor. The other is a disc with a complete copy of Windows (you can't use an upgrade disc), and I'll even go further to say that you need to have a version of Windows XP. You can use either of the major versions of XP, which are XP Home or XP Professional. All the steps in this book are for XP Home, but they'll also work for XP Professional (although some of the details might be slightly different).

In the remainder of this introduction, you'll get a brief overview of the two methods with the intent of helping you choose a place to start. After you've tried one, you can always try the other method to see which you prefer.

Before getting to the point, I do need to include one disclaimer. I've assumed that you have a basic working knowledge of Windows, such as using the Start menu, launching files, and so on (these basic tasks aren't much different than they are on a Mac). I'll explain the details of specific tasks related to running Windows on a Mac, but I don't attempt to explain how to use all, or even most, of Windows' capabilities. If you've never used Windows before at all, take the Windows XP tour about which you'll be prompted the first time you log in to Windows (on a Mac or otherwise).