Windows 7 has been in public beta for a little over a month now, and you've no doubt heard friends, coworkers, reviewers, bloggers, even the nightly news rave about its evolution from Vista. You'd like to see how many user interface tricks Microsoft stole from Apple this time, but you need to install it on a computer to try it out.

When trying out a new operating system, you have several options. You can install it on that aging PC in the basement. You could just backup your data, format your hard drive and install the beta operating system (OS) right on your everyday machine. Or, you could always just buy a new computer, too. Cash out what little stock you have left and get a second PC. What else are you going to do with the $743 left in your retirement fund?

Instead of popping for a new PC, why not use the hardware you already have. That shiny (some say too shiny) new MacBook Pro is just begging for more action than the occasional Adium chat session with Aunt Helen or those visits Flickr to see pics of her new puppy. That thing has a ton of great hardware in it. Start using it!

But what exactly is the best way to install a beta operating system (OS) on your precious Mac? Fortunately, you have two great options. You could use the built-in ability of dual booting your Mac through the help of Boot Camp. Or, you could install a virtual machine app and you can run Mac OS X and Windows 7 Beta at the same time. I've done both — and one is clearly better than the other.

VMware Fusion

The basic idea for desktop virtualization is that you install an application to enable and manage virtualization and then install software that runs independently from the main, or host, operating system. The guest operating system is known as a virtual machine (VM) and is contained in a single file. That file can be backed up, moved, copied, or deleted just like a document that you create in your favorite word processor.

On the Mac platform, there are a variety of virtualizing desktop products from which to choose: Parallels, VMware Fusion, and Sun's VirtualBox are the most popular. My favorite is VMware Fusion, which you can almost always find for significantly less than its $80 retail price, so that's what I'll talk about today.

Installation of VMware Fusion is straightforward. Pop the disc into your Mac, follow a few simple instructions, and you're ready to install a virtual machine. You'll have a few settings to choose like the amount of memory and hard drive space to assign to the VM. Because Windows 7 Beta isn't officially supported by VMware quite yet, you'll have to fool it into thinking that this is a Windows Vista installation. The rest of the installation is similar to an OS install on a normal PC.

Once installed, you can run Windows 7 Beta on your Mac by opening VMware Fusion and clicking on the Play button. One big advantage to this method is the ability to "pause" your guest OS instead of shutting it completely down. The state of the VM is written to the file and your data is safe. Playing a paused OS will resume your system right where you left off.

Using VMware Fusion does present some issues with Windows 7 Beta, however. There is a very distracting video issue when installing, changing resolution, and changing the size of the VM window itself. The screen will flicker as Windows 7 appears to struggle with exactly what resolution you're looking for. A friend of mine also had difficulty with wireless networking in Windows 7 Beta. It's as though the Airport Wi-Fi adapter wasn't working through Fusion, a problem that I did not encounter.

The biggest issue with Windows 7 Beta, however, is the complete lack of support for the Aero user interface effects under VMware Fusion. The advanced interface requires the OS to address the hardware in a way that VMware currently does not support. To be honest, this may be a deal killer for you. Half of the fun of Windows 7 are the updated animations, effects, and other perks of the user interface.

Boot Camp

Built into Leopard itself is Boot Camp, a dual boot utility that allows users to install Microsoft Windows XP or Vista in addition to the operating system your Mac came with. There is a huge difference between the concepts of dual booting and virtualization. When you are virtualizing desktop operating systems, you are running two operating systems at the same time, the host OS and the guest OS. In a dual boot configuration, the computer is running only one operating system at a time, allowing the hardware to be dedicated to that OS. Oh yeah, Boot Camp is "free", too.

In order to dual boot, you'll need to set aside part of your hard drive for use with Microsoft's OS by partitioning the drive within the Boot Camp Assistant. After Windows 7 Beta has fully booted, install the Boot Camp drivers. This will ensure that the correct audio, video, and other drivers are installed and working properly.

The odd video and networking problems simply do not exist when using this method. I was able to install Windows 7 Beta, acting as though it was Vista, and everything worked immediately. Performance is drastically improved over the VMware Fusion method. The whole OS is snappier and video performance is solid with my early-2008 MacBook Pro and its Nvidia 8600M GT, so I'm able to fully enjoy all of Aero's graphical goodies. Boot up and shut down times are extremely quick, too. About the only downside is that you can't suspend a Boot Camp OS as you can with a VM.

Best of both worlds

"That all sounds great, Kevin, but what if I don't want to shut down OS X just to do something quick in Windows 7 Beta?" I hear you. And I have a sorta-answer.

I personally use both Boot Camp and VMware Fusion. If I want the full experience of Windows 7 Beta, I simply boot into that operating system by holding down the Option key when the Apple logo appears after I turn on my Mac. But if I want to just pop into Windows to do something quick, I start up VMware and use it to open that same Boot Camp partition. All of my programs and data are still there, but I lose the Aero interface and sacrifice a bit of performance.

If you don't have VMware Fusion, try out Boot Camp. You already have it, and all it takes is a bit of disk space to try out Windows 7 Beta. Of course, you could download the 30-day trial of Fusion and use it to install Windows 7 Beta. If you don't like it, you'll only have increased experience to show for your time — no risk! Either way, you'll get a sneak peak of what the boys and girls in Redmond are up to.