Pick your poison: Boot Camp or Parallels?

You can bet that the people at Apple had quite the field day when the programs that would allow “alternate” operating systems to run simultaneously with OS X on Mac came into the world. For many who are considering the glorious conversion to Mac, or those that simply can’t escape the tape worm that is a Microsoft-dominated world, Boot Camp and Parallels means living a Mac-centric life while still fitting into the rest of society. However, I think they both degrade Mac machines in separate ways, and I’ll explain why.

Ok, the obvious blessings of being able to run Windows and Windows-based programs along with OS X on a Mac aside, what comes in your Bootcamp or Parallels value meal? A healthy serving of danger with a side of viruses and malware, or a tasty entreé of performance slow down with an extra large portion of frustration…Mmm!

Let me break down both options’ positives and negatives:

1. Boot Camp – completely free from Apple (for now), Boot Camp will allow you to run Windows entirely on your Mac on a separate hard drive partition without any slowdown or lag. In fact, from what I and others have found, running Windows on a Mac is (at first) faster than on a PC.

However, that doesn’t mean the gremlins aren’t waiting right around the corner for you. You see, all those lovely little viruses and malwares don’t particularly care that you are choosing to operate Windows on a Mac…objecting, “But this is a Mac, and you viruses and malware aren’t welcome!” won’t get you particularly far.

Once you open up Pandora’s Box Windows to the internet, you debase your Mac to just some other PC. You’ll have to take every precaution, to no avail of course, to keep your PC safe.

So aside from the fact that your Mac’s Windows partition will inevitably be virus-ridden and resemble something of a leper, you’ll have great performance and functionality of Windows on a Mac. Yay!

2. Parallels – the beauty of Parallels is that you can run Windows inside of OS X, allowing you to utilize all the lovely Windows tools in addition to your Mac functions. Using Parallels will allow you to navigate the internet within OS X and avoid opening up your Windows partition to the internet.

What they don’t tell you about Parallels is that it is essentially a big nasty tapeworm, ready to sap the life from your Mac. I’m writing this article on an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz, 1 Gb Ram, and I can tell you you can kiss about half of your system resources goodbye to the drain that Parallels is.

Also, the lovely function of OS X that stores recent programs’ memory requirements for future use turns against you, meaning that if you open Parallels and close it, your computer will continue to run like you have that nasty bit of software still operating. The only way to reach your original functionality is to restart or wait it out.

Here’s what you have to think about: If you go Boot Camp, you will need to clean your Windows partition relentlessly, although you will be able to use Windows to the fullest. If you go Parallels, you can bank on poor performance, but you will be able to run Windows and OS X simultaneously, and might avoid some of the nastier negatives of Boot Camp.

Frankly, I’d avoid the whole mess altogether and use as many Mac-friendly Windows programs as you can without the actual OS. I suppose my suggestions won’t do much for Mac business, but I think we can all agree, at some point those that have transitioned to Mac will want to purge Windows from their lives…I applaud all those who can say their lives’ are officially Windows-free.

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