Honey, I ran Windows and Mac OS both at once

The uncomplicated installation process takes about an hour, and entails burning a CD, inserting a Windows XP installation CD, and waiting around a lot. Then you designate either Mac OS X or Windows as your 8216;8216;most of the time8217;8217; operating system or choose an operating system each time you start up the computer.

You can install and run your favorite Windows programs and incredibly, they run as fast and well as they ever did. Correction: they run faster than they ever did. And if the Windows side ever gets bogged down with viruses and spyware, you can flip into Mac OS X and keep right on being productive.

Boot Camp8217;s problem, though, is right there in its name: You have to reboot restart the computer every time you switch systems, losing two or three minutes each way. As a result, you can8217;t copy and paste between Mac and Windows programs.

A superior solution has come to light in form of a little company called Parallels. The software is called Parallels Workstation for Mac OS X, although a better name might be No Reboot Camp. It, too, is a free public beta, available for download from parallels.com.

Parallels, like Boot Camp, requires that you supply your own copy of Windows. But here8217;s the cool part: with Parallels, any windows version or even Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 or MS-DOS can be run. In the finished version, the company says, you8217;ll be able to work in several operating systems at once.

Suppose you8217;re finishing a brochure on your Mac, and you need a phone number from your company8217;s Microsoft Access database. You double-click the Parallels icon, and 15 seconds later8212;yes, 15 seconds8212;Windows XP is running in a window of its own, just as you left it. You open Access, look up and copy the contact information, click back into your Mac design program, and paste. Sweet.

The Boot Camp beta feels finished and polished. Parallels, on the other hand, is obviously a labour of love by techies who are still novices in the Macintosh religion of simplicity. Its installation requires fewer steps than Boot Camp, but even its Quick Installation Guide is filled with jargon like 8216;8216;virtual machine8217;8217; and 8216;8216;image file.8217;8217; Parallels says it8217;s completely rewriting its guides..

And to get the best features like copying and pasting between operating systems and enlarging the Windows window to nearly full-screen size, you8217;re supposed to install something called Parallels Tools.

Sometimes, beta really means beta. While it8217;s easy to copy text between Mac OS X and Windows programs, copying files and folders is trickier. Nevertheless, the Mac will be known as the computer that can run nearly 100 per cent of the world8217;s software catalog.

Microsoft will sell more copies of Windows. Consumers will enjoy the security, silent operation and sophisticated polish of the Mac without sacrificing mission-critical Windows programs. 8212; NYT