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Parallels v 3.0 Released

diamond3 said:
So thats all it takes to give up on a program that you bought. You entered in 3 keys that happen not to work and you're done? You either didn't need the program in the first place or you are easily frustrated.
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That's about all it'd take for me - three tries, and they're not able to so much as supply a working key? That to me is a company that doesn't have it's **** together. If they can't even get their demo key system working properly, why should anyone put any faith in their product or support?

First impressions are everything, and Parallels blew it with that user.

kbmb said:
Looks like Beta 4 of Fusion is out, with Unity!

http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/

-Kevin
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Coincidence, or smart play by VMWare?
 
kbmb said:
If Parallels or VMware can use your bootcamp installation, then it treats it as one Windows install. No need to have multiple valid copies to have to activate.

-Kevin
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Excuse my ignorance on this subject, but I don't really get what you just said. I don't have an Intel Mac yet but I am getting one soon and I guess I just don't know if I should get Parallels or Bootcamp or what.
 
cpnorris said:
Excuse my ignorance on this subject, but I don't really get what you just said. I don't have an Intel Mac yet but I am getting one soon and I guess I just don't know if I should get Parallels or Bootcamp or what.
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Ok so Bootcamp is not virtualization software. It actually runs Windows directly on your Mac. The downside to this is....you have to reboot into Windows. you can't run Windows and OS X at the same time.

Parallels or VMware Fusion are virtualization software. They allow you to run Windows in a Virtual Machine within OS X.

The problem becomes if you want to do both...or all three. Windows has to be activated (unless you have a volume license copy). So, installing in bootcamp is considered as 1 activation. In order to run Windows in Parallels, you'd have to activate a different copy.

What Parallels and VMware have done is allow their virtual machines to use the Windows installed in the Boot Camp partition....thus sharing a version of Windows, not requiring multiple copies.

Hope this helps.

-Kevin

Bern said:
How stable is VM Ware? I find Parallels is not great.

I already have a Bootcamp partition. If I use it with VM Ware do I have to reactivate XP again like you do with Parallels?
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So far VMware is rock solid and really stable.

I've not used Parallels yet....but from what I've read, VMware is easier on your own system resources.

-Kevin
 
Bern said:
How stable is VM Ware? I find Parallels is not great.

I already have a Bootcamp partition. If I use it with VM Ware do I have to reactivate XP again like you do with Parallels?
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I have been using Parallels and vmWare Fusion (along with BootCamp) and Parallels is faster with graphics while vmWare Fusion beats it handily in CPU. I think Parallels is much more mature but it's not a beta either. I like vmWare Fusion more.
 
Just installed VM fusion beta 4, installing vista right now. I would be doing so with parallels, but the activation key they emailed me didn't work . . .

Fusion looks like it will do what I need, plus it's free right now while it's in beta, and unity looks way nicer than parallels' coherence.
 
cgc said:
I have been using Parallels and vmWare Fusion (along with BootCamp) and Parallels is faster with graphics while vmWare Fusion beats it handily in CPU. I think Parallels is much more mature but it's not a beta either. I like vmWare Fusion more.
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I have used both as well and I completely agree. For MacBook owners who won't be doing much 3D graphics anyways, Fusion is the way to go.
 
meagain said:
Yipes - I just bought Parallels..... Is this Fusion really better? :eek:
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Fusion is still in beta. While its got a long way to go in terms of catching up to Parallels in terms of features its getting there. Esp with the latest version.
the biggest draw for me to Fusion is the ability to use an image on a thumbdrive that works on my MBP, my home desktop (PC.), and my work PC without needing to purchase any additional software (VMware has players for free for the PC.)
Of course there are prob very few Mac users who would be using it in the same way.
 
flopticalcube said:
At the moment Parallels does 3D graphics better with their support of DirectX9. VMware only supports some DirectX8.1 games.
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4 pages of posts and i have yet to hear one person claim to have run one game successfully.
I am about to install Dues Ex (the original game) i will report back.

I wish there was a "suspended mode" where you can suspend one of the OSes so the other can use most if not all the resources.
 
lad1509 said:
4 pages of posts and i have yet to hear one person claim to have run one game successfully.
I am about to install Dues Ex (the original game) i will report back.
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I would try, but the trial activation keys they have sent me don't work, and I don't want to pay for an upgrade that may or may not work as advertised.
 
adamfilip said:
after being involved in the beta testing of parallels 3. im concerned about its stability. I think they could have spent more time testing and refining before this release
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I'm been concerned about that since day one. I get the impression they want to get a huge lead on VMware before they release their final version and the fast and furious pace is a direct result of this. Every major release has had a pretty hefty set of bugs with it. What makes it feel like they are beta testing on paying users. *shrugs* Whatever.

aristobrat said:
Wow, Parallels 3 is ~80MB and Fusion Beta 4 is 167MB.

Remember when Parallels used only be ~30MB?
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In this day and age of games installing at 3GB; 167MB is pretty dang small. Also keep in mind there is also debugging code in there. This is a beta after all.
 
Lumi said:
All of this has been available with the VMWare Fusion Beta for about 2 months now, so basically you can get all this without paying for it yet.

VMWare Fusion supports DX9, bootcamp partition and USB2, it may still be in beta, but it's rock solid and at the present time it doesn't cost anything, why would anyone buy Parallels? VMWare are the market leader, there are tons of pre-built VMWare VM's being built by third parties meaning you dont have to go to the effort?

I just dont see why everyone is going on and on about parallels when it's going to get so waxed when Fusion is launched as a boxed product.
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I do believe VMWare will be much more expensive. Last time we bought a copy of workstation for Windows it was about $250 I think. That was a while ago, so maybe things have changed. I surely wouldn't fork out that much myself, though businesses might.

p1ayer2 said:
Can someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I was told not to bother with Parallels for serious gaming because it can't use my machines entire capacity like boot camp can.

Newer games like Supreme Commander for example are hungry for all the GPU and CPU they can get. I just don't think that first person shooters would run with enough frames per second to make it worthwhile while even recent real time strategy games would probably have to be so dumbed down it wouldn't be worth playing them.

Maybe Parallels would be good for Tetris or something but that's not what I'm into.

************
MBP 2.4, 2GB Ram, 160 7200 HD
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I would say this is true, I really don't see how a virtual machine could perform like running directly on the hardware. Even if it was fully utilizing the hardware you still have 2 operating systems running at the same time. If you really just want to play games then I would suggest running Bootcamp.

I've been using Parallels for Windows development since the first version was in beta. It's stable enough for me, but I'd have to say it isn't as fast as if I were running Bootcamp. Mostly I think the disk access is slower, when I compile I usually have to resort to web browsing in OS X.
 
SiliconAddict said:
Fusion is still in beta. While its got a long way to go in terms of catching up to Parallels in terms of features its getting there. Esp with the latest version.
the biggest draw for me to Fusion is the ability to use an image on a thumbdrive that works on my MBP, my home desktop (PC.), and my work PC without needing to purchase any additional software (VMware has players for free for the PC.)
Of course there are prob very few Mac users who would be using it in the same way.
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Sounds great to me. Could I buy ONE copy of Vista and use the same thumbdrive for both native Windows booting (on my Intel iMac) AND for VMWare? Or would I have to buy a second copy of Windows and use Boot Camp in order to boot native? (Sometimes I would want to for 3D speed.)
 
Can anyone answer this little question?..

My dad bought an intel iMac along with a boxed copy of Parallels last december, Parallels, so far remains sealed in it's box.
From reading the posts i get the impression you have to register it online before you can use it. So, since dads copy hasn't been registered, whats the chance if he registers now he'll be inline for the free update to 3.0?


I'll investigate more tomorrow, i may have completely missed something, i often do. But you never know :cool:
 
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