UI Changes we'd like to see

[xochi]

Background : I'm coming from Virtual PC for Mac 7. Though I appreciate the vastly better performance of Parallels, I find the GUI somewhat crude, and there are features of VPC that I'd like to see added. What are your pet peeves / suggestions for UI improvements?

• VM List window -- a single window that shows all VMs installed on the system, allowing you to open/close/edit/pause/resume/suspend/delete them. Right now, the only way to do this is with the "File/Open Recent..." menu, which is not very usable.
  
• Pause button on toolbar should Pause the VM, rather than Suspending it. In my mind, the "||" (pause) icon has an established meaning ("Pause"), and it should therefore perform the menu item that is called "Pause". The stop button should do a Suspend. When I click the Pause icon and the VM Suspends, I wanna cry Imagine if you hit the Pause icon on your iPod, and it shut down...
  
• Parallels should work with Microsoft to find a way to let us use our licenses? Lots of us paid good money to Connectix / Microsoft for Virtual PC 4,5,6,7. How about some sort of program where VPC users could submit a serial number or other proof of purchase and get a license to win 2000 or XP or whatever. Also, it sounds like the Vista license is going to preclude usage in Parallels... would be great if you guys could cut a deal with them to get around these issues.
  

 

[Robster]

Not sure about point one, point three I cannot see Microsoft agreeing to.

HOWEVER point two I agree with 100%.

Pause should pause NOT suspend.

Robin

 

[nsayer]

Background : I'm coming from Virtual PC for Mac 7. Though I appreciate the vastly better performance of Parallels, I find the GUI somewhat crude, and there are features of VPC that I'd like to see added. What are your pet peeves / suggestions for UI improvements?


[*] VM List window -- a single window that shows all VMs installed on the system, allowing you to open/close/edit/pause/resume/suspend/delete them. Right now, the only way to do this is with the "File/Open Recent..." menu, which is not very usable.

I don't like this so much, because it implies you have to somehow "register" the virtual machines so they appear in that list. The current paradigm of treating them more like documents is preferable, IMHO, but with one addition: Parallels should use a directory with the "package" bit turned on to hold the config file, disk(s) and suspended-RAM. That is, there should be one icon that (if necessary) I can right-click on and choose "show package contents" to go find the stuff inside, but that one icon normally is a single document that represents all of the VM's resources.

[*] Pause button on toolbar should Pause the VM, rather than Suspending it. In my mind, the "||" (pause) icon has an established meaning ("Pause"), and it should therefore perform the menu item that is called "Pause". The stop button should do a Suspend. When I click the Pause icon and the VM Suspends, I wanna cry Imagine if you hit the Pause icon on your iPod, and it shut down...

Agreed. Also, I'd like to see the suspend button start the process, then hide the window and show the progress bar in the dock icon. This is similar to how VPC used to work. There's no need to occupy my screen real estate with a huge window with which I can no longer have any meaningful interaction.

[*] Parallels should work with Microsoft to find a way to let us use our licenses? Lots of us paid good money to Connectix / Microsoft for Virtual PC 4,5,6,7. How about some sort of program where VPC users could submit a serial number or other proof of purchase and get a license to win 2000 or XP or whatever. Also, it sounds like the Vista license is going to preclude usage in Parallels... would be great if you guys could cut a deal with them to get around these issues.

$75 too much for you?! That's cheaper than the VPC 6->7 upgrade price was!

 

[davide]

$75 too much for you?! That's cheaper than the VPC 6->7 upgrade price was!

$75? I paid $300 to get a new XP Pro license. I would have loved to have gotten a credit for the XP Pro license I bought with VPC.

Adding to the insult is the fact VPC was junk, that never ran windows further than causing my Powerbook to kernal panic!

 

[nsayer]

$75? I paid $300 to get a new XP Pro license.

Oh. You're not talking about the virtualization software itself, you're talking about Windows.

Check the EULA. There may be a corner case you can use to justify using your old VPC Windows license, so long as you don't sell or give away the old copy of Virtual PC. I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were, I wouldn't be your lawyer, so you should get your own legal advice on this if you're unsure.

In my case, the company I work for is large enough that it has an inventory of volume license keys. They allocated one for me and I use that. Perfectly legal. Wouldn't have it any other way.

As for Vista, I'm sure I'll be one among the multitude who will wait until service pack 4 or so, and then only if the software I use (mostly TOAD and Office) requires it.

 

[xochi]

In my case, the company I work for is large enough that it has an inventory of volume license keys. They allocated one for me and I use that. Perfectly legal. Wouldn't have it any other way.

For software developers, I've discovered the "Empower ISV" program https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40001971 which, if I'm understanding it, gives you a 5-cpu license of XP/2003 (and Vista?) for development work. $375 for 24 months, seems like a decent deal.

But yeah, I'd like my credit back for the XP license in VPC that's useless to me now...

 

[xochi]

I don't like this so much, because it implies you have to somehow "register" the virtual machines so they appear in that list. The current paradigm of treating them more like documents is preferable, IMHO, but with one addition: Parallels should use a directory with the "package" bit turned on to hold the config file, disk(s) and suspended-RAM. That is, there should be one icon that (if necessary) I can right-click on and choose "show package contents" to go find the stuff inside, but that one icon normally is a single document that represents all of the VM's resources.

I don't remember how VPC handled it, but I think any time you opened a new VM it was automatically added to the list. And, since you typically created new VMs from this window anyway, you didn't have the problem of them not showing up. I guess I really liked the way that I could, at a glance, see the status of all 5+ of my VMs that I had (some running, some paused, some suspended and some off). I also don't like how 2 or more VMs running in parallels gives me 2 or more identical icons in the dock...

 

[nsayer]

But yeah, I'd like my credit back for the XP license in VPC that's useless to me now...

So sell the whole VPC package on eBay. I believe the EULA for VPC allows you to transfer the whole thing to a 3rd party so long as you don't retain any copies. In such a scenario the license for XP or Win2k or whatever goes right along for the ride - you're selling the virtual machine to someone else, so they get the OS license for that virtual machine too.

 

[nsayer]

More on XP transferability.

You generally cannot view the EULA for Windows once you've agreed to it. But there is annotated copy online.

http://linuxadvocate.org/articles.php?p=1

It's not 100% certain that this site is up-to-date or represents the EULA to which you agreed, but presuming that it represents current Microsoft policy, for the purposes of this discussion, it appears that either course of action are acceptable.

Section 13 says that you can transfer your license from one machine to another so long as you remove it from the first completely. It also says that you can sell your copy to another person so long as they agree to the EULA and you don't retain any copies yourself.