System Requirements

Parallels Desktop for Mac is a powerful, easy-to-use virtualization software for Intel®-based Macs and is designed to work with a wide range of operation systems. Review the software and hardware requirements necessary for installing Parallels Desktop for Mac below.

Software Requirements

Primary Operating System	Mac OS® X Tiger 10.4 or higher running on an Intel® Mac.

Hardware Requirements

Mac Computer	Support for any 32- or 64-bit Intel®-based Mac: iMac Mac mini MacBook MacBook Pro MacPro Tower MacBook Air
Processors	Support for any 32- or 64-bit any Intel® Core Duo processor featured in new Intel® Macs: Intel® Core Solo Intel® Core Duo Intel® Core 2 Duo Intel® Dual-Core Xeon Includes full support for Intel Virtualization Technology (VT)
Memory Requirements	512 MB minimum available memory (1 GB recommended). Support for any memory configuration (up to 16 GB), without modifying your host system
Disk Space	Software Installation – 70 MB of available hard drive space for Parallels Desktop for Mac installation. (Does not include hard drive space for guest virtual machine.) Virtual Machine Installation – Hard drive space allocation for virtual machines is dependent upon the guest operating system. 15 GB of available hard drive space is recommended per virtual machine for Windows and Linux.
CD-ROM	CD-ROM drive for installation (if applicable)
Networking	Internet connection is required to receive online Parallels Desktop for Mac product updates
Display	16-bit or 32-bit display adapter recommended

Software Requirements

	Virtual machine operating systems - such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris - are not included.
Guest OS	Windows: 3.1 3.11 95 98 NT	2000 XP 2003 Vista Business, Ultimate, Enterprise, Home and Home Premium
	Linux: SUSE Red Hat Debian Fedora Core Mandriva Xandros	Other: FreeBSD OS/2 eComStation Solaris MS-DOS OpenBSD 3.8

Note: Only 32-bit Guest Operating Systems are currently supported.

Hardware Requirements

Processor	Virtualized Processor of the Host computer
Motherboard	Generic motherboard compatible with Intel i815 chipset
Memory	Up to 1500 MB RAM available for guest virtual machines
Keyboard	104-key Windows enhanced keyboard
Mouse	PS/2 wheel mouse
Display	VGA and SVGA with VESA 3.0 support 3D Graphics Support
IDE Drives	Up to 4 IDE Devices; CD/DVD-ROM Drives, Virtual Hard drives or any combination of the two. Virtual Hard Drive from 20 MB up to 120 GB each
Floppy Drives	1.44 Floppy drive mapped to FDD image file
CD Drives	CD/DVD-ROM drives mapped to physical drive or ISO image file Burn CDs and DVDs directly in virtual machines, play audio CDs, and read data from copy-protected CDs and DVDs.
Sound Card	AC'97-compatible sound card. Sound recording is supported
Serial Ports	Up to four Serial (COM) Port mapped to a socket or to an output file
Parallels Ports	Up to three bi-directional parallel (LPT) ports mapped to output file
Ethernet© Cards	Up to 5 Virtual NIC’-s Ethernet virtual network card compatible with RTL8029 bridged to Apple Ethernet or Apple Airport adapter, connected to host-only or shared networking
USB Ports	USB 2.0 Support; 8 USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB 1.1 ports