I'm running Win-7 Pro 64-bit on my desktop PC and Snow Lepoard on my iMac.

And I'm thinking of getting a MacBook Pro rather than a PC Laptop (as can't find one I like the screen/built quality of at present)

What is the cheapest legal way of getting Parallels with Win 7 pro on the Mac? Win 7 Pro now is rocketing in price as discontinued, but Win 8 has full downgrade rights to 7 (I don't want 8 - all the software I'm testing and supporting in on 7 at present). Can I go for an OEM version to run on Parallels?

Keep an eye out for the bundle deals the likes of Macupdate and MacHeist do every few months. Parallels or VMware frequently show up in those and the cost of the bundle is often less than the purchase price of Parallels on it's own.

As for win7 pro... I think the OEM version should work fine - it's still the full OS after all and all the drivers & etc Parallels need are bundled with the Parallels app, so..

Jon

What if like me you do not have a legal reason for a Windows version? I need to get a legal copy of Windows, to run some older Windows games. What would you suggest?

Any copy of Windows you buy has an implied licence for all older version of windows. So if you buy a copy of windows 8 you can then install any older version of windows legally. Not sure how that works with Windows 7's online activation to be honest with you but legally, you'd be covered.

Jon

I think that the games may still play under Windows 8. So what sort of price should I expect?

Win 8 definitely has downgrade rights to Win 7, not sure of the procedure, presumably you install from Win 8 media and telephone to activate with your Win 8 code.

Jon thanks for the tip of the bundle deals will have a look out!

http://www.macwindows.com/emulator.html - might be of use to choose an approach if you don't want to do the Boot Camp thing.

have you had a look at virtualbox which runs on a mac is free and open source ...

https://www.virtualbox.org/

For a Virtual Machine, you need to buy the full package.

You cannot use an OEM or upgrade version in a Virtual Machine.

Downgrade from Windows 8: You can only downgrade from Windows 8 Professional, the standard version does not include any downgrade rights.


I've tried VirtualBox on Windows and OS X and I've never used it for more than running a headless LAMP server. The performance is dire, even for a virtual machine and the graphical desktop performance lags way behind VMWare and Parallels.

I'd go with BootCamp + VMWare or Parallels using the BootCamp installation of Windows. The virtual Windows runs like a dog on my iMac and brother-in-law's MacBook Pro (4GB).

Just looking at Amazon and the prices for Windows 8 and it is horrendous if you want to stay legal, and cannot use the OEM route.

Windows 8 Pro, you can use the OEM version, they have changed the licence, but you can't downgrade it to Windows 7 in a VM, AFAIK.

That said, I'm very happy with Windows 8.

I managed to do it more cheaply, because I used the MS Action Pack subscription, which gave me full licences, but that is only cheaper if you already have it or you need it for other purposes.

You get licences for all desktop operating systems, server OS and server tools, MS Office etc. So if you need all the products, it is a great way to save money, but if you only need 1 licence, it won't really save you any money (it used to be 250€ a year).

Thanks for that. I sometimes wonder whether buying a simple laptop will be cheaper. It will come preloaded with Windows and since I do not plan on accessing the internet it is safe as well.

Personally, I've not experienced this. It may be dire compared to the alternatives, but when running on my 2011 2.3GHz Core i5 ran Windows 7 and BattleField 1 without a problem, the only thing I did to it was pack it with 8GB RAM.

worked very well on my iMac (2.66 C2D 8GB ram)
i had XP home OEM, Vista basic OEM, Win7 OEM & Debian 6 installed

have just started to install XP via VirtualBox on this little Shuttle ...