Hello - Only been browsing the Parallels forums for a day or so, and I am ASTONISHED at how many people are demanding new functionality / changes / updates etc. - and even criticising Parallels for not responding to questions / releasing updates. This software is free at the moment - and then only $50 when released - and for me it has enabled me to use a Windows only program from within Mac OSX without having to re-boot every five minutes. Works like a dream (only problem is that my program needs a higher colour depth than 24 bit) Well done Andrew
32-bit support was not presented in Parallels Tools by mistake - will be available before the release.
I agree with those who criticize those who criticize. While Parallels has flaws, it is also dirt cheap, under VERY ACTIVE development with problems being sought and repaired daily, and fills needs nobody else even announced a solution for. You gotta love these guys - it's like Connectix back in the "good old days" when they blew the world away with RamDoubler and then VirtualPC, a solution that undercut SoftWindows by hundreds of dollars yet was faster and more flexible. I see Parallels taking their spot...
Re: Great software - why criticize? You know, people always are able to find something to criticize, especially when the software does not do things the way they want it to or they want. Now, I will wait until the release version is ready and then I am going to see the reactions before deciding whether I will buy. If I buy then I will probably buy 2 licenses, one for Windows and one for Mac. I agree that the software is great but if its stability is at least the same as VMware Workstation then it will be even better.
I've used both VMWARE and Parallels. OK given how long VMWARE has been in business it's not suprising that some features are more mature than Parallels currently -- but look at the price differential (40 usd vs 180 or so for vmware desktop). Parallels runs in general very well and OK it's not totally polished yet but for a lot of applications totally functional and can easily replace VMWARE in those cases where you are not looking for SERVER virtualisation or high end corporate functionality. - These will no doubt be provided by Parallels in the future but we have available a great functional product at a realistic price. Note in addition VMWARE don't have OS X support yet and haven't so far made any announcements. I'm sure the next / upcoming release of Parallels will narrow the gap between it and vmware workstation even more - and I for one find this a very useable product even in its present state. Mind you it doesn't matter what activity one is engaged in -- there are always people who'll bash anything. I'll bet if BMW started to give away FREE top of the line cars there would be some people still grumbling saying why couldn't they give away FERRARIS or similar. Parallels - well done and am looking forward to the next release. Cheers -K
Unfortunately, i would have to agree.. There are some people who would never be happy, even if you gave them a winning lottery ticket, they would complain the lottery should have been higher. It's as though some people don't know how to be happy, and only find happiness in making others miserable. I love Parallels for what it does so far! It's been amazing the speed of the releases, and it has enabled me to have a very functional workstation for things that just have to be done in Windows. (Like having to code in Visual Studio..) I have faith that my USB issues will be solved by the time we hit GA, but even so, I've been happily using this product since beta 2. It just keeps getting better too!
It's not free software They're not giving you anything for free, they're letting you test their application for them in exchange for criticism that they want from you so they can improve the application. I agree that this is a great application, and that the pace of the development has been very impressive, but I also think that there are still too many rough edges for them to already have release candidates. Following the same pattern, the early betas were too rough to really be betas, as someone else rightly pointed out, they were more like alphas. I just hope that they get most of the remaining nasty kinks out before they release it. And I would think that the more people complaining about an issue the more likely Parallels will want to give priority to addressing it. I doubt they've been releasing these public betas just for gratitude from the testers, they want feedback, and they want people to buy licenses for the release. If you want to show your gratitude, do it by purchasing licenses, not by keeping quiet about bugs and design flaws. (And yes it is a good price )
"Improved" USB functionality has been promised RSN (Real Soon Now). Total pass through seems elusive, but would be highly desirable. Let me repeat that because it's important: USB passthrough for user selected devices (without restriction) would be highly desirable; very highly desirable. See? You don't have a corner on frustration.
Why criticize? To start with, I paid $80 for it and spent an entire evening trying to make it work before I stumbled on the news that it had a known problem with the Mac Pro, and did when I bought it. That's not cool. I did verify it worked on my MacMini, so OK, it works. To their credit they came out with a fix in a reasonable amount of time, but I still spent about 6 hrs getting a working install of Ubuntu. I'll reserve judgement until I have more time with it, but they don't advertise it as a hobbyist product, and at this point I certainly wouldn't recommend it in commercial use. I would've gladly paid another $100 at this point for a smoothly working installation. I'll play around with it a little more but I'm looking forward to the VMWare product.
As a Windows SW developer we've had our headaches with USB. It came into the world as "the new amazingly flexible and fast serial IO that supported plug and play". I've had more problems with USB than I can remember with anything else. I'm not saying Parallels doesn't need to provide more support, I just understand how difficult USB can be. Many development environments are not built with USB development built in. Tool kits are required and then you have the whole plug n play thing to worry about. Plug n play is a neat idea but one that is frought with possible troubles and pit falls. For it to work there must be an OS layer that monitors everything going on so when a new device appears it can pop up the required dialogs. It is this same layer that I believe is making life hard for Parallels. But they will get it at some point I'm sure. M
No Complaints I purchased parrallels for $83.00 AUD and it performed excellently on the reason for purchase. i.e. my & my wifes tax returns. For the previous five years I had used Virtual PC but it did not work on my lastest Intel Mac. I can also play Lemmings. Yippe.
