I started using Parallels 6 about a year ago with the hope that it would allow me to enjoy TheFormTool on my MacBook PRO 8GB laptop, which is my main machine. That wasn't possible; that version was a memory hog of the first order, slow to start, inconvenient. Spending time getting familiar with our Dell laptop was the lesser bad alternative.

Happily, that's changed! I've spent the past week driving Parallels 8 (Parallels.com for free trial, update or purchase). It claims to be 25% faster, but my experience has been much better than that. I've used Apple's Mission Control to configure the Mac so that Windows has its own separate desktop that I can open with just a three-fingered swish. Half a second later I running TheFormTool at native speeds but with all the creature comfort (and much of the safety) intrinsic to Mac.

For the first time I can access customers' documents submitted for service help without the extra effort of dumping them out to DropBox, uploading them onto the Dell, waiting forever for it to spin up, and then opening the document. Now, I drop it onto the Mac's desktop, change desktops to the Windows environment,  drop the file onto the Windows virtual machine, and open it with Word 2010. Three seconds, total, max. (Even this effort is probably unnecessary, but I make a real effort to keep the Windows side of my Mac off the Internet and away from emails, just to be safe.)

To play the game, you'll need Parallels 8, Windows, and Word 2007 or better (the Windows version). That's not inexpensive, even if using eBay, but given the productivity boosts we've seen from customers using TheFormTool, the average payback is probably less than a week or two two.

While we continue to investigate a potentially even easier and less expensive workaround for our Mac friends to be able to use TheFormTool on their favorite platform, I can now recommend Parallels 8 without reservation.