The New York Times has a great piece on Parallels, a MacOSX application that will allow you to run Windows and Mac OS at the same time. I don't particularily need one more reason to absolutely adore the Mac Mini we just purchased but I gladly welcome it. While I haven't quite switched, I'm definetly more system-agnostic then I was before and being able to drag-and-drop between OSes will surely cement my current state of mind. The question is does it work? Can a $50 piece of software really be the holy grail of computing? Apparently so...

Parallels is very fast — perhaps 95 percent as fast as Boot Camp. (It's definitely not a software-based emulator like Microsoft's old, dog-slow Virtual PC program.) It's even fast enough for video games, although not the 3-D variety; for now, those are still better played in Boot Camp.

I wish I had time to actually try it out and am itching with anticipation. Could this be it? Could this mean that we can have single machine that does just about anything? My MacMini is faster than my current PC, it's quiet, and people go 'oooh' and 'aaah' when they see it. I've succumbed to it's irresistible charm. It's like a kitten that can burn DVDs.