Learn about the requirements and steps to install Microsoft Windows 7 on your Mac with Boot Camp.

Step 0: Virtualization or Boot Camp? Before you get Windows on your Mac, you have to decide how you want to run it: virtually within OS X, or on a separate hard drive partition using Boot Camp., you can turn your Mac into a dual-booting computer capable of running Windows or OS X natively.

When your Mac is running Windows using Boot Camp, your Mac is a Windows PC. In order to do this, however, Boot Camp requires you to repartition your Mac's hard drive.

Virtualization software works differently: You're not messing with your Mac hard drive's partition map, you're just creating files and running Mac software that creates a virtual instance of a PC. If something goes really wrong — and this is preview software, remember — it's a lot easier to clean up the pieces using virtualization software than it can be if parts of your Mac's hard drive gets hosed. Boot Camp doesn't officially support Windows 10 yet, and as such, its drivers may not play 100 percent nicely with the technical preview if you choose that route. I plan to revisit Boot Camp support for Windows 10 after Microsoft officially releases the new version, and I'll post my results. Download maxthon for mac.

In the interim, though, I don't recommend using Boot Camp for Windows 10 Technical Preview. Step 1: Download virtualization software Running virtualization software seems to be the smartest option on the table at present for Microsoft's Windows 10 preview, and both or are good options if you have them around. If you don't already have virtual machine software on your Mac, you can download Oracle's. It's a virtualization tool just like Fusion and Parallels, but it has the virtue of being free. There are trial versions of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion which won't make you pay a fee for a two weeks or one month, respectively, so you're welcome to try those out if you prefer.

But if you never want to pay a fee, check out VirtualBox. My experience is that compared to VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox doesn't offer the same sort of robust performance or have quite as polished Mac integration (though there's no charge for it).