Why should I upgrade from 10 to 11?

D

DonR1

Bit poster
Where can I see PDv10 vs. PDv11 comparison of features? I run Windows 10 in PDv10 already - even now on Parallels site, PDv10 is claimed to be the only version of Parallels Desktop 'optimized for Windows 10.' I've not seen any limitations (I run full screen desktop and switch between Windows/Mac).
In looking for information to help me decide whether an upgrade is worth it, I found that the PDv10 & PDv11 readme & user documentation on the Download page are exactly the same documents (that of version 10's, so where is the version 11 documentation?)

So far, I see nothing compelling about this upgrade - just hype & marketing. In fact, I see it as a potential downgrade. I'm worried that PDv11 is a crippled version of PDv10 - to have marketing room & features for a PDv11 Pro version, which may be the path back to full functionality. For example, PDv10 allows 64GB vRAM / 16 vCPUs per VM, but the PDv11/Pro comparison (Virtual RAM / virtual CPUs for each VM) makes it appear that PDv11 is capped at 8GB vRAM / 4 vCPUs. My present PDv10 Win10 runs 48GB vRAM / 8 vCPUs - it sounds like PDv11 would be a downgrade for me?! Furthermore, a link on this site purports to show information to back up the speed claims (some vmark data?) - it's just a picture of a link. Also missing: is it comparing PDv10 running Win10 with PDv11 running Win10? Without some more information, it's a meaningless claim. Parallels is overtly using Windows 10 to sell PDv11, so I would not be surprised if the speed increase is not almost entirely, if not 100% attributable to Windows 10 (vs Window 8.x ), and not advances in PDv11. I've clearly seen shorter boot time, docs open quicker, etc. running PDv10 & Win10.

Don't get me wrong - I love Parallels Desktop! I need clear information in order to justify $50 upgrade to PDv11, and I'm a bit concerned about the lack of information, and sometimes misleading information found on this website.
 
Hello DonR1,
I understand that you are looking for some clarifications regarding the latest Parallels Desktop.
This time we have categorized the product into different categories where the home/standard edition if for general purposes like home/Student etc. The Pro version is meant for developers and IT professionals. There are a lot of advanced features in this new version which will definitely improve your experience of using Virtual Machines. Please find some of the updates below.
Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac release build 11.0.31193 includes the following new features:
Windows 10
·An onscreen guide walks you through upgrading a Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 virtual machine to Windows 10.
·Use Cortana, the Microsoft speech-enabled virtual assistant, even when your Windows 10 virtual machine isn't the frontmost application.
·When running Windows 10, the Action Center has an icon in the OS X Menu Bar, so you won't miss messages from Windows.
Optimized for longer battery life
·Battery life is extended up to 15% in office and heavy 3D graphics scenarios.
·Travel Mode extends battery life by temporarily shutting down resource-intensive services running in the VM.
Performance
·Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 startup and shutdown are up to 50% faster
·Operations with files in Windows are greatly improved (the PassMark disk test shows up to 20% improvement).
·Operations with files moving from Mac to Windows and vice versa are up to 5% faster.
·Suspending a virtual machine is up to 20% faster.
·Improved network performance in certain scenarios.
Productivity
·OS X Quick Look for Windows apps: Quickly preview a Windows file before opening it, just as you would on the Mac.
·Menu item "Open Recent" when right-clicking Dock icons of popular Windows applications.
·Menu items "New Document," "New Spreadsheet," and "New Presentation" when right-clicking Dock icons of Microsoft Office and some other apps.
·Resuming a virtual machine can be cancelled while in process.
·Menu item "Open in Windows" when right-clicking Mac files.
·When you open a Mac file in a Windows VM, a notification gives you the option to set files of that type to always open in the Windows application.
·Printing from Windows using a printer shared from OS X allows you to adjust paper size and select one- or two-side printing using the OS X Page Setup dialogue.
·Quickly lookup a word or preview a file in Windows using a Force Touch trackpad.
·Added new default shortcuts for Windows virtual machines:
Command + Backspace = Shift + Delete
Alt + Right = Ctrl + Right
Alt + Left = Ctrl + Left
Alt + Shift + Right = Ctrl + Shift + Right
Alt + Shift + Left = Ctrl + Shift + Left
Ctrl + Alt + Backspace = Ctrl + Alt + Delete
Other New Features
·OS X Location sharing with Windows virtual machines.
·Automatic synchronization of the volume setting of the virtual machine with the volume setting of the Mac.
·New "English Japanese (Apple) - Parallels" layout to support JIS keyboards.
·Create a new OS X virtual machine from any OS X recovery partition.
General Enhancement
·Improved support for Boot Camp virtual machines.
·Simplified virtual machine configuration interface.
·Virtual Machines with Snapshots enabled now support compacting.
·Automatic virtual machine Pause mode intelligence improvements.
·Switch to Coherence using a button in the virtual machine title bar.
·Improved importing of third-party virtual machines.
Parallels Desktop for Mac
Pro Edition
A new edition to the Parallels Desktop family, Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac Pro Edition is designed for developers, web and graphic designers, power users, and other professionals with demanding needs.
Support for popular Developer Tools
·A plugin for Visual Studio for remote debugging in target virtual machines.
·Integration with Docker: Manage Docker hosts in (or with) Parallels Desktop.
·Integration with Chef: ohai now detects Parallels Desktop as host system on Mac and as guest system on Mac, Windows and Linux.
·Integration with Jenkins: a plugin for continuous integration.
Parallels Control Center toolbar
·Debug Guest with help of the Parallels debugger (DBG).
·Connect to a virtual machine via secure shell (SSH).
·Generate a guest OS core dump with one click (DMP).
·Open the virtual machine IP address in default browser on Mac (WEB).
Network Tools
·Analyze network traffic in virtual machines using the tcpdump or wireshark utility from the Mac host.
·Create custom virtual networks.
·Simulate various network instabilities by configuring bandwidth and packets loss.
 
Dishant,
Thank you for responding. Can you clarify PDv11's vRAM/vCPU per VM specification? In the comparison with Pro, PDv11 is shown as 8GB vRAM / 4 vCPU per VM to Pro's 64GB vRAM / 16 vCPU, which is what PDv10 supports - I've allocated my PDv10 VM for Win10 with 48GB vRAM / 8 vCPUs. Would I lose that capability with PDv11?

Again, thank you for taking time to respond.
 
DonR1 said:
Dishant,
Thank you for responding. Can you clarify PDv11's vRAM/vCPU per VM specification? In the comparison with Pro, PDv11 is shown as 8GB vRAM / 4 vCPU per VM to Pro's 64GB vRAM / 16 vCPU, which is what PDv10 supports - I've allocated my PDv10 VM for Win10 with 48GB vRAM / 8 vCPUs. Would I lose that capability with PDv11?

Again, thank you for taking time to respond.
Click to expand...
Hello DonR1,
Yes, as I have explained earlier that this time we have categorized Parallels Desktop based on the users we have (Basic, Developers/IT professionals).
The basic version will support maximum up to 8gb RAM and 4 CPUs per VM and the Pro version will give u access up to 64Gb RAM and 16CPUs.
Like you have mentioned that you have allocated 48GB RAM to your windows 10 VM, if you are not using your Windows 10 for development purposes then a maximum of 8GB RAM will be enough. Even 8GB RAM is sufficient for the basic usages. You will still be able to use multiple applications.
Once again if you think you have concrete needs of 48GB RAM then you will have to shift to Pro version otherwise for any other purposes(home usage, multiple applications running at the same time, banking software's, professional software's) 8GB RAM will be more than sufficient. We have categorized the product after a lot of research. So pick a version(Home/Standard, Pro-if you are very sure that you need 48GB RAM at any cost) based on your usage and at any point of time if you need assistance, then we will be there to help you out.
 
Dishant, why did you guys decide to DOWNGRADE the standard version and remove features which we've had for years?

Yes, I know. You can run multiple applications with 8gb.

B.F.D.

Ask someone if you dunno what that means. It's really seriously not the point.

WHY DID YOU REMOVE A FEATURE WE ALREADY HAD? DID ANY OF YOUR "LOT OF RESEARCH" SUGGEST THAT USERS WERE GONNA BE SERIOUSLY PISSED ABOUT THIS?

I have no problem at all with the idea of coming out with a "pro" version, but it should be distinguished by NEW features that we didn't have before. Under no circumstances should you TAKE AWAY FEATURES. It's just not done in polite, civilized society.

Give us a reason to say, "Hey that's cool new stuff, I'll go for that" instead of "Stop twisting my arm, I'll pay!"
 
Yep, we've heard the similar feedback and we've already reported it to the marketing team. As for not having this feature in the standard edition, we will notify the development team. Thanks!
 
Maria@Parallels said:
Yep, we've heard the similar feedback and we've already reported it to the marketing team. As for not having this feature in the standard edition, we will notify the development team. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Thanks Maria, as I've looked through the forum about this, your's is the first response from Parallels I've found that acknowledges this would be a problem. I completely agree with Mike's comments and totally understand his frustration with this.

Perhaps this may be a further argument for your marketing department; over the last few years I've only purchased Parallels upgrades every couple years, as I needed to. Now we have a situation where instead of getting $50 from me (and I expect a bunch of other similar users) every couple years for upgrades, Parallels is going to get nothing. I understand the need to drive sales and profits, but pissing off long standing, loyal customers is certainly not the way to do that.

Now that I see that Parallels is at least aware that they're alienating a large portion of their existing customer base I'll quit venting in the forum and just wait and see if anything positive comes from this.
 
Hi Parallels,

I couldn't agree more with the comments. I've been a loyal supporter since version 7. I do maths intensive calculations that require much more than 8 GB often. I'm an academic and while it's part of my research, I get no financial support from my institution to buy software, or any extra income from the research I do. I certainly don't want to "rent" the program which is what seems to be happening. It really seems like the company is trying to create a revenue stream rather than provide a service. I had great respect for the parallels team but I am very disappointed in this latest marketing direction. Please at least make things a bit easier for non-profit customers!
Thanks Allan
 
I know this is an old thread but i wanted to weigh in....I get the Parallels nags on my mac to upgrade regularly....get P11 now for 50% off. My problem is simple, I use P10 to run a Windows 10 virtual machine on my MacPro for finite element analysis. I give the VM 16GB of ram and 8 of my 12 vCores. The Mac Pro is a 12 vCore machine so my jobs run at about 65% of max utilization but I can live with that given that I still have 4 vCores for my Mac apps while I wait for jobs to finish.

From my reading, P11 is a step backwards unless I want to go with a subscription. I guess I should be glad they didn't cripple P10 with an update like they did to P9 when Yosemite came out. P9 worked great, an update was pushed out, P9 stopped working with a banner screen saying "update to P10". If they gave P11 the same base level functionality as P10 I would probably upgrade. I predict now that when Apple moves from EL Cap to whatever is next, P10 will stop working.
 
Hi, u
ssls6454 said:
I know this is an old thread but i wanted to weigh in....I get the Parallels nags on my mac to upgrade regularly....get P11 now for 50% off. My problem is simple, I use P10 to run a Windows 10 virtual machine on my MacPro for finite element analysis. I give the VM 16GB of ram and 8 of my 12 vCores. The Mac Pro is a 12 vCore machine so my jobs run at about 65% of max utilization but I can live with that given that I still have 4 vCores for my Mac apps while I wait for jobs to finish.

From my reading, P11 is a step backwards unless I want to go with a subscription. I guess I should be glad they didn't cripple P10 with an update like they did to P9 when Yosemite came out. P9 worked great, an update was pushed out, P9 stopped working with a banner screen saying "update to P10". If they gave P11 the same base level functionality as P10 I would probably upgrade. I predict now that when Apple moves from EL Cap to whatever is next, P10 will stop working.
Click to expand...
Hi,
Upgrade to Parallels Desktop version 11 is not mandatory, if your current set up works fine with Parallels 10, you can continue using it. Please let us know if you have any technical issues. We can assist you!
 
Sylvester@Parallels said:
Upgrade to Parallels Desktop version 11 is not mandatory, if your current set up works fine with Parallels 10, you can continue using it. Please let us know if you have any technical issues. We can assist you!
Click to expand...
Regarding "We can assist you!": It would be nice if you can finally release a fix for the USB problem in Parallels Desktop 10 introduced with 10.11.2. On this page

http://blog.parallels.com/2015/08/20/everything-you-need-to-know-about-parallels-desktop-11/

you are ensuring full compatibility of Parallels Desktop 10 for El Capitan.
 
This is really terrible business practice!!! I think it is even legally problematic. You charge for taking away something. Memory, Hyper-V support, templates... There is enough to make a pro version interesting (cloud services...) you can introduce without taking away things from your old users. Shame on you!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top