i spend my days as a developer who has to use a lot of 3d video games. the project im on is all about integrating out of game utils into games. so i was very excited to see that DX9 and opengl2.0 and DX pixel shader 2.0 support was added to parallels 4. as soon as i got the email i immediately purchased and downloaded and installed and upgraded all my VMs. here is my feedback. BTW i use all my VMs full screen, i run a dual-quad core 3.2ghz mac pro with 4g ram running leopard (always with all latest updates). if you need more info then that i would be glad to give it to you. 1. in parallels 3 when i flicked my mouse outside of the VM the menu bar at the top and dock would appear. this does not seem to occur in parallels 4. to get the menu to appear i have to click on another app which brings up the menu for that app. clicking on the parallels icon then brings me back into my VM. so i can never access the menu. if there is an option (even if i need to drop to a terminal and manually edit a file) i would very much appreciate being able to use it the old way 2. CDs/DVDs. the auto mount thing is cool. for some reason or another i am not having very much success with it however. whenever i put a game CD/DVD in (and i've tested on multiple games) the installer does not seem to find a key file and either crashes or wont run. so i have to manually connect/disconnect the CD anyway which is what i thought the feature was designed to avoid. that doesnt really mater to me that much though as im used to that from parallels 3. just an FYI. however this is what bugs me. the mac CD eject key no longer works when the CD drive is connected to the windows VM. it used to work fine in parallels 3. again an option here would be most appreciated. so when a game im installing requires me to switch CDs. i need to manually disconnect. hit the eject key. insert the new cd. manually connect it and resume installing. 3. steam games. since upgrading all my VMs to parallels 4.0 i can not run steam games using the Half-life source engine. they all crash in the main menu with something about CMeshDX8::LockVertexBuffer failed. they used to run (not the greatest but they ran) in parallels 3.0 4. running multiple VMs. as you can kinda expect as a developer i have test our product on different versions of windows. parallels being a great solution for that i have vms with 2k, xp no sp, xp sp1, xp sp2, xp sp3, vista no sp, vista sp1. its awesome. thanks for the great tool. however now when i start a 2nd VM i get this warning about running 2 VMs might slow down my machine. now again i am a developer so i understand why this warning is in the product. ive had to add a ton of similiar ones to my product. however i would really really really REALLY appreciate a check box that states "dont show this again". 5. maybe its just me but there does seem to be a little bit of a general "laggy" feel to parallels 4. it doesn't bother me that much most of the time however once in a while im working faster then the computer and have to slow down because of it. the VMs get held up opening explorer windows, command arrow to switch spaces hangs for a sec. that kinda stuff. 6. i never use coherence (Sorry if its spelled wrong) i only ever use my VMs in full screen or windowed mode and only need parallels tools for flicking my mouse outside the VM and mounting my mac HDD partitions. addition options to parallels tools would be greatly appreciated. cause i never use that "parallels shared applications" jive and every time i delete the folder it comes back. if any of these things are already options i apologize in advanced because maybe the verbage is throwing me off of what the option means. i love your product. only reason i use VMWare is because i need to test once in a while on x64 platforms and afaik parallels doesnt support x64 yet. not really a biggie to me.
musikit, thank you for the feedback and using our software i have some additional questions for you, can you please clarify: 1) what menu you cannot access? can you please describe the test case in more details? right now when you flick a mouse outside of the VM you will see MAC menu and toolbar, when you ckick inside the Parallels Window you will see Parallels Menu (can you please clarify) 2) to eject disc you should disconnect CD/DVD ROM from Virtual Machine (at was made by desing) to resolve the issue with games please try to disable smartmount (that should help) 3) the issue with steam games, please try to reinstall it, as we emulated the new video card, probably that is the reason of the crash, also please check games in the supported games list on our website: http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/features/3d/ Any way we should test it, so if that possible can you please provide us with the links for the games? 4) this request i will pass to development team, they will check it and probably will add it to next updates 5) can you please check if PIS is install, in case PIS is install please try to remove it and check if the issue persists. Our development team is working on the issue with slow performance in Parallels Desktop 6) when you install Parallels Tools you may check complete and custom, in custom you may specify what features you want to be installed, also you may disable the features on configuration page Our development team has already add ed the support of 64 bit OSes, so you can test it
from open usable fullscreen windows xp VM. ( i use dual monitors, left monitor is windows XP VM, right monitor is Mac desktop) 1. click inside VM. (mac dock and mac menu at top of monitor will disappear) 2. move mouse outside VM (mac dock and mac menu do not reappear) 3. click on mac desktop (mac dock and finder menu appear.) thank you smart mount now disabled reinstall steam or just that game? because the game wasnt installed before upgrading to parallels 4. half-life 2 (main and mods all fail with error i quoted) counterstike source (fail with error i quoted) half-life source (fail with error i quoted) afaik they all run HL2.exe (same engine just different mods) PIS = Parallels internet security? no that is not installed. selecting install parallel tools from mac parallel's menu gives me a dialog with "cancel" or "install" after some time i am presented with a dialog that states "later" or "reboot" i am never given options to enable/disable functionality. there is no parallels icon in the windows taskbar and windows control panel does not give options either. i can find options for coherence but nothing to disable it completely. thank you i will try downloading and installing an xp x64 OS
ok after disabling smart mount. i can use the eject key but the cd drive takes the CD back immediately and using the eject key again does nothing. i have to manually disconnect then eject then manually connect again.
I have to completely agree regarding starting a VM for 4 from scratch. One of my users completely corrupted their VM while trying to upgrade for 3 to 4. With the slow responses from support, I had not choice but to build the VM from scratch. The process was a bit buggy, but went OK. The end result was a VM that runs pretty well.
