Let me start with a declaration, " I like my mac". Also, what is true is "I love my windows" However, I did not want to have 2 machines just to run 2 OS.
So, I started off looking for a way to run windows on my Mac. Here are the options I considered.
1.
Parallels
2.
VMware Fusion: Run Windows on Mac, Virtualization for Mac Lion
3. and the little known,
Oracle VM VirtualBox
I wanted to start and see how I would like the whole idea of working on a guest OS ( the OS running as a virtual machine) as against to working on Host OS( the OS running on the base machine.
So to start off my trial, I was about to download a copy of Parallels when I stumbled up on VMware Fusion. Have more than one options to virtualize my windows PC, I started researching to find out which might be a better option.
As I was googling and binging around, I came across VM Virtual box.
I considered ease, stablity and feature set and price to make my choice. I went with VM Virtual box.
Here is why,
1. It enables me to create a virtual machine on my Mac
2. It enables me to perform all the basic functions on creating and maintaining my virtual PC
3. It is open source yet backed by Oracle corp.
4. It is Free, this allows me to test it out with out a trial product which might expire in a few weeks.
5. Has enough docs and forums to trouble shoot or give you HowTos.
With that, I downloaded VM VirtualBox and downloaded a trial version of Windows 8(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/jj554510.aspx) I also downloaded Visual studio
Windows Dev Center developer downloads page.
Now I have a fully functional development environment based on Windows 8 on my Mac OSx 10.6.8.
