Thanks, Dave. I had thought about Parallels because I do have VirtualPC running Windows Pro 2000 on my eMac. While I have been experimenting on my MacBook Pro, the person who will be primarily running Windows XP (on an iMac) will be a grandson who will be taking a programming course in July using Virtual Basic. I guess I like the idea of having access to the full capability of the computer, rather than sharing with Mac OS. However, your suggestion has led me to rethink another thought I had to buy a MacBook and put XP on that. And I am getting a bit impatient with my current partitioning exercise1 Bob On 2010-06-28, at 3:24 PM, Dave Knight wrote: > Unless you really, really want to install Windows XP onto the bare iron as it > were, ie where you must shutdown Mac OS and then boot up into Windows, you > could make life a lot easier by installing it into a virtual machine. > > I've used the following and liked them both: > > Parallels Desktop, around $80 > VMware Fusion, around $80 --- Manage your account options at //www.freelists.org/list/muglo