What are the pros and cons of Boot Camp verse Desktop Parallel on a macbookl?

Question

I know that boot camp is a separate partition from os x and the parallel runs inside of os x. I'm asking about the pros and cons of each one, such as security, memory usage and etc.

Answer 1

Boot Camp lets you run directly on the hardware, so speed is an advantage. I use Parallels Workstation and sometimes the VM will run slow enough that you'll hear things like audio glitches. The disadvantage is the fixed nature of the arrangement (resizing disks is a hassle) and the lack of availability to call on the other OS. If you have something on the other partition, unless you can mount it as a hard drive you're cut off from it.

The advantage of Parallels is the flexibility. I've cut and pasted stuff between MacOS and Linux and Windows, or copied stuff between the partitions by networking between MacOS and the VM. As I've said, the disadvantage is speed, but that said the speed factor is minor enough that pretty much everything I do runs fine. It shows up on occasion in things like audio stuttering. My unscientific estimate is that it runs close enough to native speed that I don't even notice a slowdown.

In deciding, I suggest you consider how often you'll want to switch between OS'es, and how intensively you'll use things in a VM. Heavy use of the second OS and rare switching might favor dual booting, as opposed to frequent switching and less intense performance demands from whatever you're running from the VM where you'll probably want to consider Parallels.

Answer 2

Parallels is a program that runs inside of OS X. Boot camp allows for the system to boot independent of OS X.
Running boot camp will be much FASTER.