OSX + Original OS via Parallels?

I just bought my first netbook - an Eee PC - and was blown away. I wanted a Linux version, as I HATE Microsoft, but I opted for Windows XP so I could get a bigger hard drive. Then I installed Ubuntu Linux on Windows. I also got an Apple wireless keyboard, as I'm a professional writer who can't stand cramped keyboards.

Now I want to buy another netbook for a friend. I want to put together an exceptionally nice computing platform and am looking at Acer's Aspire One. What I crave more than anything is the OS X operating system. (I also own a MacBook Pro, which I use much as a desktop at home.)

Though I'm not a total amateur, I'm not a hard core geek, either, so a lot of this technical stuff is hard for me to understand. But let me explain my overall goal.

Tentatively, I'd like to purchase an Aspire One, clone the hard drive to an external hard drive, then install Mac OS X and clone it to the external hard drive, too. I would then have a netbook running on Mac OS X (Leopard), with a clone of both the original hard drive (Windows XP) and the Mac OS X hard drive on my external hard drive.

Can this be done? If something went wrong with my internal hard drive (Mac OS X), would I be able to copy the cloned Windows XP drive back to my internal drive, returning my Aspire One to its default condition? Regardless of whether WinXP or OSX was installed on my internal hard drive would I be able to boot up off either of the cloned OS's on my external hard drive? In other words, if my Aspire One was running on OSX, could I boot it via the original WinXP program on my external hard drive?

An even more tantalizing possibility is to install Mac OS X, then install Parallels, then install the default Aspire One operating system in Parallels, so I would effectively have Mac OS X and Windows XP running side by side. Can this be done? Would the Windows OS running in Parallels be virtually identical to the Aspire One's default Windows OS?

I want to buy an Aspire One for a friend who's studying Japanese in college. I've discovered that, in Mac OS X, you can toggle back and forth between English and various versions of Japanese (e.g. Kotoeri), so you can type in English or Japanese. You can probably do similar things in Windows and maybe even Linux, but Apple would probably be cooler.

This computer would be used for other tasks as well. However, my primary goal is to give a really classy gift to a very special lady, and I can't think of anything classier than an Aspire One running Mac OS X. I'll peruse some of the other threads on this forum to learn more about the process of installing OS X on an Aspire One. In the meantime, I welcome feedback on my crazy ideas.

I won't be able to make my purchase until shortly after New Years, but I want to start doing my homework far in advance.

Thanks!

 

OS X isn't too hard to install nowadays. I'm fairly nerdy but had never looked at installing OS X on a PC before and I managed it first time with the Boot 132 method (see OS X forums on here).

I have no idea whether parallels will work, but you can dual boot OS X with Windows, Linux, or whatever other OSes you want via other methods.

As for using and external keyboard, you'll quite possibly find you don't need to with the AAO. I tried out all the major netbooks (both sizes of Eee, MSI Wind, HP Mini Note) and most of them had utterly crap keyboards, but the Acer's one is really usable if you don't have massive hands. I can type probably 90% as fast on it as I can on a Macbook Pro keyboard (the nicest keyboard I've ever used).

 

I'm not sure that you would be able to run the original WinXP Home image in Parallels, but I can tell you that Parallels works great.

I have it installed on the OS X partition on my Aspire One with XP and Vista guests (I also have XP and Linux partitions on the hard drive - though the XP partition and guest are NOT shared).

 

Parallels might actually be overkill for my friend. A Mac OS X installation alone would probably suit her needs. But I would want to clone the default hard drive as a backup at the very least. And it's hard to resist playing around a little with multiple operating systems. It's amazing what people are doing with computers these days.

 

I had an macbook 2.1 w/ 3Gb running parallels and VM Ware and Vista at different points..Even on that machine, the performance issues were a slight problem for me..Although always wondered how it would run on the little Atom single core processor with only 1.5GB in RAM..

I also just upgraded my HDD to 250GB..Cloned the WinXP partition to the new drive via USB and tried to boot from USB..Got a BSOD everythime..The clone was good and worked perfectly on installation into my AAO..Point being, I don't think WinXP can boot and run off a USB Hard Drive without detailed changes to system files. I've seen some work arounds on the Insanely mac forums..

I've had no problems booting from a USB Leopard install to my AAO..

Can't hurt to try tho!

Good luck and Let us know what you come to!

 

Well I've tried parallels recently. Long story short...I've fried my XP installation.
First, I installed parallels. I then noticed the "boot camp" selection was available as it normally would be on a mac, so I decided to see what would happen. That was a mistake! It acted like it was going to start up just fine, then black screened. I decided to try and restart to the XP partition which then gave me a message that the file "system32\hal.dll" was corrupt or missing. I tried an XP disk to copy that file over without success. It acted like it was going to boot up and would black screen. I tried booting into safe mode resulting in it hanging on a driver(I'm assuming something parallels was trying to install). Looks like it will be a clean install for me unless someone has some advice...???