Parallels, Mac and windows using US International keyboard

The best advice. Trail both and then decide. I was a long time fan of VMWare, however recently moved to Parallels. Side by side, Parallels gave me a 5.1 experience index for Windows 7, and VMWare Fusion gave me a 4.9. Performance wise both are solid on my hardware, however I prefer the interface and coherence features of Parallels over Unity. This is however a personal preference. Full disclosure: I run a MacBook Pro i7, 8GB's of RAM and a 500GB 7200RPM HDD.

Both product does the job, and both work well. They are also in the same price bracket. You also can't compare features since both have the same functionality, just the method of implementation differs. The choice between the two is really up to you and how you use Windows virtualised. I game in Windows, and Parallels provided me a better experience. I also had issues running Expression Web, Silverlight and WPF in VMWare due to the graphics card, but this has apparently been resolved in the latest update.

My wife however prefers VMWare and finds it easier to use then Parallels. Moving machines between the two are fairly easy. Use one for the full trail, and then transfer your machine to the other and trial it. Do a comparison on which one works for you.

The "~" key is located between the "left shift" and "Z" keys on the international english keyboard.

Many users are used to have this key under the escape key (the US layout), and they (including me) use the KeyRemap4MacBook software to swap those keys.

Edit: KeyRemap4MacBook is now called Karabiner. Here is a screenshot of the configuration I'm using to remap Section to Backquote key.

Edit: Karabiner does not work on macOS Sierra, however a new project is in development: Karabiner Elements. As of now, it can do the replacement in question: