Anthony Vance

Every once in a while a killer app debuts, a software application so useful that it alone justifies the purchase of the supporting hardware. Witness Parallels Desktop for Mac, a virtual machine software that allows multiple operating systems to be installed on a single machine. This means a Mac running OS X can now also run Windows at the same time.

This is a huge boon for people wanting to switch to Macintosh but who have been forced to stick with Windows because of one or two critically important programs that only run on Windows. Parallels makes use of virtualization technology in Intel’s new Core Duo processors so that Windows runs next to OS X at near- native speeds. Essentially a Mac with Parallels is equivelent to two laptops–one a Mac and the other a PC. This is what makes Parallels a killer app.

However, Parallels can run many more operating systems than Windows XP. Parallels can also run Linux, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, NeXTStep, Windows 3.1?virtually anthing that runs on x86 hardware.

On my laptop, I can run OS X side-by-side with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. Further, thanks to an open source program called VirtueDesktops, I can switch simultaneously between these three operating systems. To see how cool this is, check out this video.