I moved from Windows Vista to Macbook Pro and have a home network of Windows Machines and USB storage drives formatted as NTFS used for sharing and backups. I had several programs that would only run under Windows so Installed Vista (later Windows 7) under Bootcamp.

Being somewhat naive about Mac, I didn't find the free NTFS nor become aware of the virtual machine (VM) options for MAC like VMware and Parallels (I tried Oracle/Sun's free VM but it was much too technical for me). Here's my experience with NTFS for Mac and the companion HFS for Windows.

1. HFS for Windows does not support encrypted Mac disks. If you select Filevault (may have been the Mac default), the Mac disks from Windows show up as Bands and you can't read them from Windows.

2. Both NTFS for MAC and HFS for Windows are disabled when running under a virtual machine, and the functions they perform are provided by the 2 VM's I tested, but only when those VM's and virtual OS (Windows) are running.

3. However, NTFS for MAC will give you read/write access when you don't want to boot up or allocate the resources for a VM, for example, just to access an external USB Drive or a file under the VM (Or Bootcamp). Running the VM, even on dual 2.53GHZ processors and 4GB of memory, is resource intensive. You have the usual slow boot and shutdown times of Windows and MACOS slows down noticeably and Windows is often very slow. (D) not to install HFS for Windows under a VM, only under Bootcamp.

4. Paragon's Tech support says installing HFS for WIndows under the VM can cause a BSOD (Windows Blue Screen of Death). I installed it under Bootcamp, then installed the VM and didn't see this problem.

5. Paragon tech support can be slow to respond, they provide only e-mail support for free for a very limited time (though they did respond beyond that timeframe for an issue opened in the timeframe) and there are occasionally minor language issues.

6. Paragon's refund policy is a short 30 days after purchase, so if you encounter a problem like I did, you may have to ask for a refund first and then perhaps work the issue with tech support in parallel. I asked for an extension of the refund window given the lack of warning in marketing materials about two common conditions (use of a VM and encryption of MAC disks), but they repeatedly refused.

7. I asked Paragon to post items 1-4 on their marketing materials so customers are not surprised, but haven't got confirmation yet that they will do it.

8. I did not have any stability problems with the software. I didn't measure the performance but it didn't notice any delays vs. native access or from a VM.

9. The instructions for installing HFS for Windows (Read only) weren't very clear. Despite re-reading the doc and help files I had to contact technical support to figure it out.