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Alternative Methods for Running Windows on Your Mac

You may be happy to know there is another way to install and run Windows (and other operating systems) on your Mac that doesn’t require partitioning a section of the hard drive. My biggest beef with the Boot Camp method is that the partition you create for Windows has a fixed size — it doesn’t increase or decrease, which can waste a lot of space if you don’t use all of the partition. On the other hand, it may not be large enough to contain all of your data. My second beef is that I’m limited to installing Windows and not alternative operating systems like Linux. Thankfully for folks like me, there is another way: virtualization.

Virtualization is a method that allows you to install multiple Intel-capable operating systems on your Mac at the same time (as many as your hard or external drive can hold) and run them simultaneously within OS X. There are several software packages out there that can help you achieve this dream, some of which I mention here. These applications help you create virtual machines on which you can install operating systems. These virtual machines access the computer hardware and run at almost native speeds. Another great upside to virtual machines is that they can be made to expand or contract based on the amount of data they contain, which prevents you from wasting hard drive space.

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