My wife and I are cruising sailors and our boat is now in French Polynesia. As we cruise the Sea of Cortez or the Pacific, we use a marine single sideband (SSB) to send and receive email, maintain our blog, and gather weather information. Using the SSB requires that we use a specially made modem and software. The software, Airmail or Winlink both require Windows, and that's where Parallels comes in. We're both Mac folk and we absolutely depend on Parallels to successfully mimic Windows so that we can communicate with the world while a thousand miles from the nearest land. Parallels has allowed us to sail where we wish for the reasons mentioned and they've also kept up with a quickly-evolving Apple operating system.
