If it’s not the first time you’ve used Parallels, launch the Wizard by selecting Install OS VMWare is more likely to be the first allowing 3D in a virtual OS.
Some additional info: As a friendly digger points out, you won’t be able to run Aero (the fancy graphics stuff in Vista) no matter how great your Mac video card is.
With that said, they will be nearly identical if you have a Mac Pro, Mac Mini, MacBook or any other Intel based Apple Mac, and the process is similar in the newer versions of Parallels.
The steps and screenshots used for this tutorial are specific to an older version of Parallels Desktop for Mac running on a MacBook Pro w/ OS X (10.4.8). Similar to How to install Ubuntu in OS X using Parallels – a complete walkthrough, this tutorial will take you every single step of the way through installing Windows Vista using Parallels for OS X.
