run visual studio on mac

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/413820/visual-studio-on-a-mac


http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

Lots of people are talking about Parallels and VMWare Fusion, but I didn't see any mention of the other methods I've used to good effect.

1. Visual Studio via Remote Desktop - I have a laptop running Windows/Visual Studio with a static IP and use the Microsoft Remote Desktop client to connect from my Mac. This has the advantage of minimal overhead on the Mac, so is more responsive than a VM. However, it has the obvious disadvantage of requiring a second machine running Windows and Visual Studio. If you're running Windows Server 2008, as a bonus you can run RemoteApp to share just Visual Studio to your mac - very convenient.
2. Virtual machine using VirtualBox - All the major features of a VM, except VirtualBox is free. I've used VMs with VMWare Fusion, Parallels and VirtualBox and I have to say I find performance to be pretty much even across all three. Parallels tended to drive my CPU harder than the other two but the actual VM responsiveness was fine. VirtualBox also has Seamless mode, essentially similar to Parallel's Coherence mode, but less integrated into the Desktop. I use this every day to run a Windows-only application on my Mac and it works great, sharing only the window for that application instead of running a full Windows desktop.
3. Boot Camp - depending on your needs, running Boot Camp with Windows installed as a dual-boot OS will of course offer the best performance but with the downside of running Windows ;)