You need a retail copy of Windows, most original equipment manufactures (OEM) disks for PC's contain specialized drivers and software, checks the hardware and won't run on anything else. But I'm not covering those here.įirst off, if your reading this and deciding which way to go, virtual machine software or Apple's (free) BootCamp, I advise you read this, you can actually do both depending upon your hardware performance need and capability of your machine. I am choosing the free VirtualBox for this as to appeal to the most users, regardless of budget as those in educational phase are rather hard up for funds, however if one chooses they can use commercial versions of VMFusion or Parallels Desktop which has more features and more support. It's a great life skill to be capable in the all major computer operating systems. However many people and businesses use Windows and in order to keep one's options open for employment etc., it's vital that one at least has a working ability with it in case they need to use it, like when away from their Mac for instance. I love OS X, it's a great operating system and I work in it all the time.