I've had an Intel MacBook Pro for several months, but until today I had kept it untainted by that other operating system. Today I kissed innocence goodbye and installed Windows XP within Parallels Desktop. Aside from the disquieting knowledge that I've got a piece of pure evil residing on my beloved Mac, the process went very smoothly. Besides the official documentation, I also followed an article from Ars Technica that, while somewhat dated (it's for version 1.0), was helpful in explaining some of whys of the process.

So far, Windows-in-Parallels is running like a charm, not that I've been torture testing it. Besides satisfying professional curiosity, I really only need this for a few things—our university CMS requires IE/Win for full functionality, and there is a Windows-only client for our administrative systems that I need to use occasionally—however, it is a significant convenience not to have to switch computers to take care of these tasks. So for me, it really is a case of Windows: The New Classic (to steal John Gruber's coinage following the introduction of Boot Camp).