Quote:
Parallels Desktop for Mac is a hardware emulation virtualization software, using hypervisor technology that works by mapping the host computer’s hardware resources directly to the virtual machine’s resources, allowing each virtual machine to operate identically to a standalone computer. Each virtual machine effectively has its own processor, RAM, floppy and CD drives, I/O devices, and hard disk—all the resources of a physical computer[1]. Parallels Desktop for Mac virtualizes all devices within the virtual environment, including the video adapter, network adapter, and hard disk adapters. It also provides pass-through drivers for parallel port and USB devices.
Because all guest virtual machines use the same hardware drivers irrespective of the actual hardware on the host computer, virtual machine instances are highly portable between computers. For example, a running virtual machine can be stopped, copied to another physical computer, and restarted.
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Features
Parallels Desktop for Mac is able to virtualize a full set of standard PC hardware, including [2]
A virtualized processor of the Host computer
A generic motherboard compatible with Intel i815 chipset
Up to 1.5GB of RAM for 32-bit guest virtual machines
Up to 32MB of video RAM (VRAM) will be offered in version 3.0
VGA and SVGA video cards with VESA 3.0 support
A 1.44 MB floppy drive, which can be mapped to a physical drive or to an image file.
Up to four IDE devices. This includes virtual hard drives that range in size from 20 MB to 128 GB each and CD/DVD-ROM drives. IDE devices can be mapped to physical drive or to an image file.
Up to four serial ports that can be mapped to a real port, to a pipe or to an output file.
Up to three bi-directional parallel ports, each of which can be mapped to a real port, to a real printer or to an output file.
An Ethernet virtual network card compatible with Realtek RTL8029(AS).
2-port USB 1.1 controller. (USB 2.0 functionality has been added in the public beta builds of Desktop for Mac 3.0)[3]
An AC97 compatible sound card.
A 104-key Windows enhanced keyboard and a PS/2 wheel mouse.
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Supported OSes
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Primary OS
Desktop needs to be installed on Mac OS X “Tiger” 10.4.6 or higher running on an Intel-powered Mac. Parallels also claims full compatibility for the not yet released Mac OS X "Leopard" 10.5.
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Guest OSes
Desktop supports running a wide variety of guest operating systems. It will run all but 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, various Linux distributions, FreeBSD, eComStation, OS/2, Solaris and MS-DOS. There are likely to be others, so long as the OS will run on a virtualised Intel x-86 guest processor.
although
But can you use a windows partition with that? 
