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Parallels - A Good Solution?

A

AF443XM

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 27, 2006
9
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I'm going to be buying my first Mac in mid/late-July and I'm debating whether or not I should go with Parallels or Boot Camp for running Windows when I need it. I want to decide soon because there's a $30 off promotion going on for Parallels right now.

I know the advantages of Boot Camp such as full native speeds, but what are the disadvantages of Parallels? I would be using Windows mainly for IE-only webpages, Adobe CS & Macromedia Studio '04 until CS3 comes out, and maybe some minor video work. I saw the screenshots of Parallels on their website, but the colors look like they're displayed poorly. Is this just due to the GIF compression of those images or does virtualization software actually have some display drawbacks (which wouldn't be good for Photoshop work).

Any thoughts or opinions would be greatly appreciated.
 
I have parallels on my mbp and its been really nice. I used it only for a few school webpages that had to have IE. I didnt really run much in terms of heavy applications. The video ram listed in parallels is only 8mb, Im sure its not a reccomended solution if your doing really intense stuff. If your looking to run a few programs here and there and run IE its really great and very fast. I would say its a good buy and ive bought my copy just for the occasion that i might need it. As far as the colors go it looks really nice, Just remember to install the parallel tools it will fix the mouse choppyness and stuff. Ive heard the paralells team is working on getting full video support so that will definetly change some things.
 
I think the colours are fine. See the attached showing the same webpage rendered in Safari and IE in Parallels. The colours look identical to me...
 

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According to Apple's "Get a Mac" page on their site, they want you to use parallels. Look (Second line from the bottom):
 

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I've tested CS2 in Parallels (using the trial download) and found it to be very usable. I didn't install Boot Camp, but MacWorld did and found Parallels was about 20% slower, which isn't bad at all.

The lack of advanced video doesn't really affect CS2 much, possibly it was slower in Parallels more because some CS2 actions are multiprocessor aware, but there is no SMP support in Parallels. But will you be using CS or CS2?

I can't speak for Macromedia Studio though, but IE should run no problem.

I think $50 for Parallels is well worth it even if you also dual boot into Windows - you never know when you need to quickly check something out in Windows.
 
robbieduncan said:
I think the colours are fine. See the attached showing the same webpage rendered in Safari and IE in Parallels. The colours look identical to me...
Click to expand...

I meant gradient colors, rather than solids. Sorry for not clarifying that.
 
I started using from RC2, but I think it's a pretty good program. On my MB, I'm running Win98SE, Knoppix, and Solaris sometimes simultaneously (to show-off) :cool: (it does get mighty hot, though)

Bootcamp may get better when Leopard comes out, but for the moment Parallels is the way to go.
Just get it before July 15th...
 
I have 2 quick questions bout parallels.. do i need a copy of windows? Or is it key'd already? And 2, if you maximize the windows screen, how will u be able to get out of it? is there a fullscreen option that still gives you the mac dock (like whenever you maximize any window)
 
Basicly boot camp is going to be faster because the windows is not running on top of another OS.
Parallels works by simulating a computer inside your computer per say. That simulation hurts the speed of it by a noticible amount. The hardware is native but it a 2nd computer.

You are emulalating your own computer in your computer for windows (or the 2nd OS. Depending on how the program is made you could run a 2nd verson of OSX. Depends if they allow it. The base code should support it.

They do that in the windows world to test stuff quite a bit in a self contain box so when it goes down it can not cause any damage or causing a restart being required. The emulator has to do a restart but the main system is shielded from the test bed.

Really good for testing stuff. Draw back to iis that it slower than the native running system.

*Random side note on the over clocker forums a while ago they where having a contest who could get the lowest bench mark score and I think one guy had the simulation running 3-4 deep to get his very low score
 
AF443XM said:
I meant gradient colors, rather than solids. Sorry for not clarifying that.
Click to expand...

See attached. Still looks fine to me. Perhaps you have seen screeshots without the Parallels Tools installed into Windows so running in 16 colour VGA?
 

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Parallels is not the choice for me. I do large PS editing and substantial Digital Paintings using Painter IX. Fortunately Painter IX is dual system so I am able to install it in XP (rather than ppc "Rosetta") using Bootcamp and it runs fantastically.

I think if I were using Parallels it would be a bit of a strain as my paintings started to grow larger and larger. I like to have Intel with Bootcamp so I can use XP natively rather than emulating... I gave up VPC for that. I understand it's better than VPC but at the end of the day it's still emulation and not native.
 
Worth upgrading RAM for parallels?

did parallels first. Ultra slow, so i went bootcamp (for now) however i do like the idea of being able to switch bewteen the two drives, rather than rebooting everytime i want to change. anyone know if a ram upgrade is worth it? anywhere in Aust. sell for a decent price? what US sites ship to Aust?
 
I'm attempting a Windows XP Parallels environment tonight...asuming I can stay awake.

I'll be installed Oracle in the XP machine, for some development work I have to do. I'll let everyone know how the performance is later.
 
MB/MBP memory in Aust.

MatBook said:
did parallels first. Ultra slow, so i went bootcamp (for now) however i do like the idea of being able to switch bewteen the two drives, rather than rebooting everytime i want to change. anyone know if a ram upgrade is worth it? anywhere in Aust. sell for a decent price? what US sites ship to Aust?
Click to expand...

Try Express PowerMac Solutions. They're up in QLD and these guys are really helpful.

As long as you're buying 5300/667 DDR2 SODIMM SDRAM, you should be fine.

I run Parallels on my MB, with 2GB ram, it's worth it!
 
Yuu

AF443XM said:
I'm going to be buying my first Mac in mid/late-July and I'm debating whether or not I should go with Parallels or Boot Camp for running Windows when I need it. I want to decide soon because there's a $30 off promotion going on for Parallels right now.

I know the advantages of Boot Camp such as full native speeds, but what are the disadvantages of Parallels? I would be using Windows mainly for IE-only webpages, Adobe CS & Macromedia Studio '04 until CS3 comes out, and maybe some minor video work. I saw the screenshots of Parallels on their website, but the colors look like they're displayed poorly. Is this just due to the GIF compression of those images or does virtualization software actually have some display drawbacks (which wouldn't be good for Photoshop work).

Any thoughts or opinions would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Hey, I found this and I think it might be helpful for you, take a look: http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6546370.html

A review from CNET comparing Mac OS runing Boot Camp and Parallels, with tests, results and a few final coments. ^^
Hope this helps
 
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