Run Two Operating Systems

Apple's Boot Camp software lets you run the Microsoft Windows XP operating system on an Intel-based Macintosh, but it doesn't support Vista—and it's still in beta, almost a year after its release. To run Microsoft's newest OS on your Apple, get Parallels Desktop for Mac. This virtualization software lets you run two operating systems simultaneously by taking advantage of the Intel Core Duo's built-in virtualization technology. To get Vista running smoothly in a window on your OS X desktop, be sure to boost the program's memory requirements to 2GB; Vista won't run well with only 1GB of memory for the subsystem.