Originally Posted by
dtsm
The three options are:
Bootcamp
Parallels
VmWare Fusion
I have a late 2008 aluminum MacBook, running Mountain Lion and use VmWare Fusion seamlessly. There are advantages/disadvantages of each, best to invest $15.00 and read this eBook before making a decision and installing:
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/windows-on-mac
If you are semi computer literate or enjoy tinkering Virtualbox is free. Of the choices shown, Boot Camp is an annoyance having to a) dedicate space for the Windows partition that will be either far too big or far too small and b) having to reboot to do one thing. It's free, only advantage.
Between Parallels and Fusion, you could not pay me (or pay me back) to keep using it. The tools installation on upgrades never worked once properly so I switched to VMWare Fusion and haven't looked back.
To be able to use Windows while still in OSX is the obvious reason to use only virtualization.
Buy OEM versions of Windows vs. retail and the savings will pay for Fusion and leave you with $100 on top of that. It is the same software.
If you need to use Windows a lot a Windows PC is so cheap it barely costs more than a retail version of the OS.