How-To Dual Boot MAC OS X and Windows 7

Dual booting means that both OSes are installed side by side on same HDD. To add a Mac OSX as a dual boot, you would need to buy OSX prior to the launch of the Apple App Store because since the launch of the App Store, you can only buy the OSX Lion (current version) from the App Store. To buy the OSX Lion from the App Store you need a MAC because the App Store is a software application that is only available on a MAC or IOS device. However you can still buy OSX Leopard, which is the version preceding the current version. Several online retailer carry this version. So assuming you have a copy of the OSX software, insert the DVD or CD into the Optical drive and restart the computer to launch the DVD. You may need to change the boot order in you BIOS. Follow the instructions on installing, partition the HDD for the separate OS. One question to answer is which boot loader to use. I know that when installing Linux as a dual boot with Windows, it is preferable to use the Linux Boot Loader. For the MAC OSX, you would need to use Darwin/x86 as opposed to the Boot.ini from Windows. As an alternative, I would suggest a Virtual Machine and installing the OSX as a virtual machine. There a few free ones from VMWare or Oracle (VirtualBox) or commercial version from Parallels or VMWare. You could also install Windows 7 on the MAC as a virtual machine using VirtualBox, VMWAre Fusion or Parallels. Hope this helps