You can download Windows installation media for free if you already have a product key, though you don’t really need a product key to run Windows 10. If you’re installing Windows 7, you’ll also need a USB drive at least 16GB in size for the installer and drivers. Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 do not any external drive for installation. To install Windows, you’ll need an ISO file of the installer. RELATED: Where to Download Windows 10, 8.1, and 7 ISOs Legally Note that Macs can only run 64-bit, non-Enterprise versions of Windows.

Windows 7 is supported, for the most part, only on Macs made in 2014 and earlier, and you’ll need an even older Mac to run Windows Vista or XP.

Windows 8.1 is supported on most Macs made between 20, with some exceptions.

Windows 10 is supported on most Macs made in 2012 and later.Here’s a quick outline, along with links to Apple’s official lists of supported models. Which version of Windows you can run depends on your Mac: recent models support only Windows 10, while some older Macs only work with older versions of Windows. In the long run, the price is well worth it. You can even use Parallels to load your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine while you are in macOS, giving you the best of both worlds. The integration with macOS amazingly well done, and the speed blows away Virtualbox. It’s something we use at How-To Geek every single day for testing software and running Windows.

RELATED: How to Seamlessly Run Windows Programs on Your Mac with Parallelsįor most people, though, Parallels makes running Windows on your Mac dead simple.

If, however, you’re looking to play Windows games on your Mac, Boot Camp might be a good choice. The vast majority of the time you don’t actually need to use Boot Camp, and you’d be better off using a virtual machine. If all you need to do is run a few Windows applications on your Mac, and those applications don’t a lot of resources (like 3D games), you might consider using a virtual machine like Parallels (there’s a free trial), VMware Fusion, or VirtualBox to run that software instead.

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