Parallels + Boot Camp + (Vista * Leopard) != Bliss -> Yet

I am done fighting the different configurations of these three products on my MacBook. At this time I simply cannot get Parallels to run my base Vista image as a virtual. It is apparently  problematic for others running Leopard and the Parallels team is working on a fix. I may try again in the future, but for now I am backing off to simply dual booting the machine with Boot Camp.

One reason I wanted to run my development environment in VMs is to be able to easily back out to a last known good image. I can achieve similar functionality using Vista’s Backup and Recover Center and that means I can safely install questionable software to my home Vista OS and still get back to a good state.

That said, I can still use Parallels Transporter (awesome) to create Parallels VMs of my base Vista OS and run that as a VM on the Mac side.

Or I can simply use Microsoft Virtual PC to run virtual images under Vista. I still have 3G of RAM being addressed, after all. The performance comparisons I have read put the two VM technologies neck and neck.

Or I could…

Or…

Wow, this virtual stuff is cool, huh?