Living in a Parallels World

Dave Shea said it almost a year ago, and I have to wholeheartedly agree: the Intel-powered Macs (such as my lovely “little” iMac) might just be the most perfect web designer computers ever made. Not only are they blazingly fast, but thanks to a wonderful little program called Parallels Desktop For Mac, it’s possible to run a full Windows installation on your Intel Mac (I’m running XP, though you can run Vista should you so desire). You can run several installations, for that matter. And you’re not just limited to Windows, either.

Parallels is an absolute godsend for someone like me, who is consantly in need of a testing platform so I can ensure that my HTML/CSS/JavaScript concoctions will work in all of the major browsers on both Windows and Mac. In reality, though, it’s to ensure that they’ll work in one browser in particular (and I think you know which one I’m talking about).

In the past, that required having two machines on your desk, maybe more. But thanks to Parallels (and those nice Intel processors), you just need one. Now, I have a complete browser testing suite at my disposal, especially after I installed Multiple IE. (On a sidenote, not only is my iMac the fastest Mac I’ve ever used, it’s also the fastest PC I’ve ever used. As well as the prettiest.)

True, there are some minuses, such as when it comes to games. But I’m not much of a gamer to begin with — and when I do find time to twiddle a joystick or two, I prefer consoles. But the pluses far outweigh any minuses. If you’re a web designer, I can’t recommend the Intel Mac/Parallels combination enough.

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