Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition

Windows in a Window

The problem with Boot Camp is that every time you switch to or from Windows, you have to close down everything you were working on and restart the computer—and reverse the process when you’re done. You lose 2 or 3 minutes each way. And you can’t copy and paste between Mac and Windows programs.

There is another way: an $80 utility called Parallels Desktop for Mac (www.parallels.com), and its rival, VMware Fusion (www.vmware.com). These programs let you run Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously; Windows hangs out in a window of its own, while the Mac is running Mac OS X (Figure 8-3). You’re getting about 90 percent of Boot Camp’s Windows speed—not fast enough for 3-D games, but plenty fast for just about everything else.

Up to Speed: Removing Windows

Maybe you’re a switcher who held onto Windows because you were worried that you’d need it. Maybe you’re finished with the project, the job, or the phase of life that required you to use Windows on your Mac. But one way or another, there may come a time when you want to get rid of your Windows installation and reclaim all the hard drive space it was using.

You can, and better yet, the process doesn’t touch anything that’s already on the Mac side. You don’t have to erase your entire hard drive or anything—Mac OS X simply erases what’s on the Windows partition of your hard drive, and then adds that disk space back to your main, Mac partition.

To do this, start by making sure you’ve rescued anything worth saving from the Windows ...