Running Windows 8 in Parallels


I recently attended a great two day code camp on Windows 8 development hosted by Microsoft here in London.  A prerequisite for the camp of course was that attendees bring a laptop running Windows 8.  As some of my readers probably know, my current choice of laptop is a MacBook Air running Mac OS X and Windows 7 on Bootcamp.  I was hesitant to overwrite my Windows 7 installation with a pre-released version of Windows 8 because I was certain there would be drivers missing, etc.  Instead I decided to look into installing Win 8 into a virtual machine.  I already own a license for Parallels for Mac OS so I figured I would start there.  I booted into my Mac partition, started Parallels and clicked the "Create a virtual machine" button.  Much to my surprise, one of the options on the next screen was to download and install Windows 8 Consumer Preview.  I happily selected this options and left for dinner as I waited for Parallels to download the necessary installation files.  I returned about two hours later expecting to have to click through a series of installation screens.  What I found instead was Windows 8 fully installed and running seamlessly on my MacBook Air.  I was shocked at how easy it was to get up and running.

The next day at the code camp, I had several other attendees approach me asking if I was having issues running Windows 8 on my Mac.  I said "no" and when I asked how they had installed it, the answer was all the same, "natively on a partition".  This reassured me that I had made the right installation decision.  I think this is a real testament to the quality of the Parallels software.  The second day, just about every Mac user at the camp came back with Parallels installed and Windows 8 running smoothly.

(2012 4/52)

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