BLOGNA.org

I’m sure some of you have probaly seen this software, but I thought I would mention it because it looks like it could be really useful. I installed the trial on my home machine and it works great.

From the website: “Parallels Workstation is a powerful, easy to use, cost effective desktop virtualization solution that empowers PC users with the ability to create completely networked, fully portable, entirely independent virtual machines on a single physical machine.”

It allows you to run virtual computer inside your existing OS…inside a window. This could be great for setting up virtual servers, or virtual testing environments on a single machine. For example, we could install Windows Vista, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows ME on top of any other Windows installation, then boot up the virtual machines(inside windows), and use it as a testing environment for applications that we create. Read more about it here:

http://www.parallels.com/

There is also a feature that allows you to run Windows applications inside of OSX, as if they were native OSX apps! Check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN9jNNeEd98

The virtual machines are portable as well. Once you set up a VM, it basically creates 2 files: a config file, and a simulated Hard Disk Image file. So, after setting up the OS, you can copy or move the 2 files to another location or another machine, and run them.

Nice!