here's another 2c worth: I have a macbook pro, which is an intel-powered dual-core 1.8Ghz laptop. it has 2 Gb of ram.
the whole thing cost almost twice as much as the nearest PC equivalent BUT it is running parallels workstation virtual machine, which means that I have "enormous predatory feline" (I forget which one) & w2k running on the box simultaneously. no rebooting.
the only thing I have to do to make this work is the occasional bit of device-sharing futzery.
for instance, the pc bit isn't allowed to directly access any of the drives unless they are "handed over" from one o/s to the other. the pc bit uses a soft-partition on the main hard drive, & it occupies a maximum of half the ram while the vm is running.
that said, I have vegas & corel running quite happily on it. I aim to try some more apps in due course. vegas has captured from a fire-wire connected dv deck, & has recorded through the mac's optical audio input.
the best part, though, for those of us that can never leave anything alone, is that different "builds" of the "guest o/s" can be saved. all of them have their dealings with the host hardware abstracted by some software intermediary, so there's no dicking around with registry entries.
basically, any hardware that I attach to the mac that the host o/s can deal with, the guest o/s is ok with too.
I like this arrangement a lot. the only problem I have now is that I keep clicking in the wrong corner to shut stuff. :-)
duncan.
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