Recently, I've been looking at the Windows Phone 7 platform in order to see what it would take to port some iPhone/iPad apps to it. As I first began I was annoyed to discover that WP7 apps can only be built from computers with Windows versions since Vista.

Not wanting to go out and buy a new computer, I decided to try some Emulation and VM options. Parallels is a bit pricey, but it had a free trial that installs the free developer preview of Windows 8. This is actually perfect for me since I want to see the bleeding edge tools in action. The performance is way better than I expected. I've actually got a better Windows Experience Rating on my iMac than on the lone Windows machine at the office! The screenshot tells it all:

This thing is a better Windows machine than my office Windows machine!

It can build Windows Phone apps. Next up, Skyrim.