New Mac User (wants Windows 7 too)

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Is Parallel Desktop king for running Win7/OSX (w/o rebooting)?
I want Win7 64 right?

If you don't mind spending the extra cash, Parallels is nice. Virtualbox is just about as functional, but free.

I'm not sure if Parallels supports 64-bit windows. I would be somewhat surprised, since in all probability OS X is running 32-bit on your machine.

Thanks for the heads up Orwell.

It looks like it supports either. According to:
PDF on Parallels

However on their knowledge base they have:
KB for Parallels

Not sure what to get.

I currently have the latest Macbook Air....

Getting ready to purchase Win7.....

Although it only has 2GB of ram so I don't know how the 64bit version would help.

Honestly, I would not suggest using a Windows 7 virtual machine with that amount of RAM. My Mac has 4GB of RAM, and it suffers a noticeable performance drag when I run an XP virtual machine. A better bet (although admittedly less convenient) is probably to just install it through Boot Camp.

Personally right now I am using VMWare Fusion, I really like it as it will boot your boot camp OS as well when you are in OSX.

From what I heard compared to VMware, parallel runs Windows faster, but when Windows is running the impact on OSX is also higher. Also, parallel locks the memory assigned to Windows when it's running, while VMware allows some of it swapped out to the disk. This may be one of the reasons why parallel has a higher impact on OSX. Parallel has much better 3D performance than VMware. However, when a guest program used 3D, the snapshot function is not 100% reliable. This in turn may be why VMware is slower in 3D.

I use VMware Fusion here.

Parallels maybe faster, but I have faith in VMW's virtualization engine - it's industrial strength and IMO it's THE industry standard.