Alright, so you have a running Hackintosh or a real mac but then you still need those applications that run on a Windows machine just because your boss uses it and he wants you to use it too.

There are several options out there like Parallels and VMWare Fusion or the usual, BootCamp. However BootCamp does not allow you to run Snow Leopard and Windows 7 simultaneously. So we’re down to Parallels and Fusion. Honestly, I went for Parallels first because it sounded better *winks* . But then, switched back to Fusion after my failed attempt to get it running simply because my budget Intel E5200 processor does not support hardware virtualization. Parallels is pretty picky about the processors you use but Fusion allows the installation to be done only on the 32bit version of Windows 7 if your processor does not support Hardware VT. The slightly newer budget E5300 does support this function though (reported by Sie Khai).

So, what will you need to get this Windows virtualization running:

- A quad core processor (if possible). Otherwise, a dual-core processor. Single core? Find a job and get a new rig.
- More than 4GB ram (if possible). If you have 4, 2 gb shall be allocated for each OS respectively.
- Sufficient hard disk space.
- An ATI 2600 or better / NVidia 8600M or better  is required for Aero. If you can run Snow Leopard with full qe/ci, you wont have any problems here.
- A retail Windows 7 installation cd.
- VMWare Fusion 3.01

After that, the procedure is reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly easy.

• Install VMWare Fusion
• Choose the Easy Installation if you are lazy. Otherwise, choose the manual option.
• Select your Windows 7 source : I’ve selected mine from a image file. There’s an option to select from a DVD too.
• Click next next next.. next until it finishes.
• Startup the virtual machine, boot into the usual Windows Setup and wait.

• Go grab yourself something to munch and probably after 10mins, you’re done!
• Click on settings at the Fusion tab and configure the settings according to your liking, stuff like choosing the number for cpu cores Windows 7 should use, the amount of hard disk space allocated, cd rom drives, usb.. etc. I allocated 1.5gb of ram for my Virtual windows 7.

My specs

• Next, get the Windows Experience Rating test done. Compare the results with your usual PC and sigh out loudly that now you have a slower system! Its not that bad for a virtualized system with Aero graphics and stuff. The virtualized OS is very responsive and it feels like you’ve natively booted it up. I’ve not installed any games to test it out yet though. Sound and networking works just like that. USB plug and play too.
• Then, get curious and play around with the other settings. There’s the Unity option to select and once selected, Windows 7 would be “fused” together with your Mac OS. You would be able to launch your Windows7 applications on the Mac dock etc. In this mode, Aero graphics only works on windows applications. Once your app goes out of the box, the Aero doesn’t work.Can’t explain much on this though. Have a look at the screenshot.

There you have it. Windows 7 running on a Mac simultaneously. I doubt this can be done on a Windows PC =P.

Finally I can run my Windows Live Messenger..

You might want to consider reading these too:

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