Make this wrong a right, refund everybody!!

M

mabeaton

Bit poster
For first time in my history with SWSOFT Parallels, I'm disappointed. I honestly got suckered into the hype of this forum, the lies of the press releases, and the desire to kick my PC's to the curb. I am asking for my money back . . . I just can't trust this company any more. The PR and marketing BS that they put out has damaged them to the point that I can't consider them anymore . . . even if their solution turns out to be the best, I just feel like I got ripped off and I don't like getting ripped off. I'm in interactive marketing . . . and this is not how you market.

In order to make this right, this company needs to refund everybody . . . that might get some of us back. This has been a marketing and public relations disaster and as blogs pick up the story, SWSOFT will become the laughingstock of the software world. I haven't seen a more botched launch of a software product . . . Never has so much been promised to so many; yet P 3.0 delivered so little. At the end of the day, users still can't even play Civ 3? Come on guys, say your sorry and do the right thing. Give back all of the money stole and we might support you. Otherwise, consider our relationship ended.

Sincerely,

M. Beaton
 
I don't want a refund. They said they're going to correct the problems that concern me and that's all I can expect. I like Parallels and it has been a very valuable product for me. I don't play games so don't give a rip about 3d. I don't use Windows as if it were running on native hardware because it's not. I use OS X applications as often as possible and will always use the OS X application even if a similar Windows app exists (CD burner, for example). I'm an expert in networking so don't ever have network/dns/dhcp problems, I don't use sharing because it's unsafe. I get all my work done using Parallels, OS X, Windows, Solaris, and Linux by using each resource as appropriate. I've frequently referred to myself as Parallels' happiest customer and except for certain security issues that they correct as they're identified, that remains true.

So shut up and quitcher bitchen.
 
I second dkp's notion. I'm actually extremely happy with this upgrade. As far as performance goes, 90% of native speed is pretty impressive in my book. Want to play games? Use BootCamp. Games are the only real reason to use BootCamp, IMHO. Or pick up a console - XBox 360 or Playstation 3. Get a decent gaming platform for less than the price of a high-end graphics card.

The fact that the Parallels folks has gotten *any* 3d acceleration to work under a virtualized environment is an extremely impressive technical feat. I don't think you can honestly expect native performance in this environment; there are better options available.
 
Well I'm glad 2 of you are happy. But some of us DID want the 3D gaming and the Blackberry support. Which by the way. were promised. So don't give me this bullcrap. You are being selfish. Glad YOU are happy and be dammed the rest of us. Cool. Have it your way. The more of us leave the less money SWsoft gets. And the less features you get.

Oh and by the way, it's already running acorss the blogsphere. I excpet the reviews in a few days. Then we might actually get a response from the company.
 
IMO half the threads seem to be written by people who bought a mac, and want it to be a PC. 25 people, from adminiistration staff to developers, in my office use Parallels on a daily basis for a variety of things. I think the worst problem ive had is the isues with dual monitors that have been rectified with 3.0. Sure, those not happy should be entitled to money back, same as you would be if you bought something in a shop.. but dont come on here demanding everyone should be refunded.. That simply isnt the case..... to be honest, if you dont like the software, then ditch it, go back to a previous version, or go use Fusion and quit filling up the Technical Forum, with posts about how unhappy you are... Some people are here to help others, thats increasingly difficult when off topic posts are repeatedly being posted.

If you really want to get someone at Parallels attention.. pick up the phone and call them..
 
mabeaton said:
In order to make this right, this company needs to refund everybody . . . that might get some of us back.
Click to expand...


So, they sell a product, give everyone their money back, and are still expected to release a flawless product?

Damn, you're good at marketing. You've sold me already!
 
dippyskoodlez said:
So, they sell a product, give everyone their money back, and are still expected to release a flawless product?

Damn, you're good at marketing. You've sold me already!
Click to expand...
Or you could be like VMWare and keep releasing betas until most (if not all) of the bugs are worked out then sell it. You basically just paying for bug fixes with Parallels....

Nuc
 
Nuc said:
Or you could be like VMWare and keep releasing betas until most (if not all) of the bugs are worked out then sell it. You basically just paying for bug fixes with Parallels....

Nuc
Click to expand...

Believe it or not, a lot of programs work flawlessly in parallels. 3d support will mature, but thats to be expected.

Other than that, I don't think I have any other programs I need to get working. "Bug ridden" when you compare a whole userbases programs yes- but \ I doubt the developers have every single program ever brought up to them in this forum, to personally test and make sure it works, do you?
 
darkone said:
IMO half the threads seem to be written by people who bought a mac, and want it to be a PC.
Click to expand...

I am not one of those people. I bought a Mac because I wanted a Mac. Being able to run Windows in Bootcamp was an added bonus. Being able to run Windows inside of Mac OS X was a really cool idea, and I jumped on it. I know a lot of people wanted to play games on it - all I wanted was to be able to run QuickBooks Pro without rebooting. I had that under 2.5, but under 3.0, I can't access my Windows partition at all. Whatever Parallels did to my Bootcamp partition, it apparently blew away the HAL.DLL. I now cannot boot Windows at all, even by rebooting and selecting it from the loader. This, to me, is just wrong - a program that claimed to allow me to run Windows inside of OS X had now prevented me from running Windows at all.

So, while I am not flaming, I would like a solution to this. As it stands now, I'm not sure how to fix it - I can't just boot with an XP repair CD and replace the file - a Mac won't do that afaik. I can read my Windows partition from OS X, so I'll probably have to copy all my important stuff to another drive and reload from scratch, and then reload 2.5

-Z
 
PrinceZordar said:
I know a lot of people wanted to play games on it - all I wanted was to be able to run QuickBooks Pro without rebooting. I had that under 2.5, but under 3.0, I can't access my Windows partition at all
Click to expand...

If all you wanted was the QuickBooks ability and you had that under 2.5, why did you upgrade?

Based upon your requirements, the best way to fix the problem would be to do a full backup of your HD and another separate backup of your QuickBooks data. Remove Boot Camp entirely from your Mac and delete the Parallels application and associated virtual machiines. Reinstall Parallels 2.5, reinstall Windows under Parallels, reinstall QuickBooks Pro and finally restore the QuickBooks Pro data.

This is a lot more work than other suggestions that you may receive but it is the best and safest way to solve the problem. As you said, you only need it for one application so it could have been a lot worse.
 
John Purins said:
If all you wanted was the QuickBooks ability and you had that under 2.5, why did you upgrade?
Click to expand...

I was hoping that the 3.0 release would fix the problems I had with Coherence and ZoneAlarm. I asked in another thread whether or not it was fixed, but no one replied to it, so I figured I better find out for myself.

Based upon your requirements, the best way to fix the problem would be to do a full backup of your HD and another separate backup of your QuickBooks data.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm going to have to do as soon as I can get my Windows XP CD from my office tomorrow. There's no way to write to the Windows partition under Mac OS X, so I can't fix the missing HAL.DLL file. I've been considering whether or not I really need to have a separate partition for Windows now.

As you said, you only need it for one application so it could have been a lot worse.
Click to expand...

And I keep my QB data on a USB key so really, I haven't lost anything but the time spent.

-Z
 
PrinceZordar said:
I can't just boot with an XP repair CD and replace the file - a Mac won't do that afaik. I can read my Windows partition from OS X, so I'll probably have to copy all my important stuff to another drive and reload from scratch, and then reload 2.5

-Z
Click to expand...

It should. :)

Bootcamp installer just slipstreams a few things for you.

If you don't see the press a key to boot to cd... text, try holding down C while booting.
 
darkone said:
IMO half the threads seem to be written by people who bought a mac, and want it to be a PC.
Click to expand...
IMO half the threads seem to be written by people who never suffered through Virtual PC and don't realize how good they have it with PD. They also seem to not be able to use the "Search" function.

Part of the problem is you have a lot of new Mac users, or users new to virtualization, who have no idea what to expect, and who have no idea just how difficult virtaulization can be. I'm still stunned at how great it works.
 
austin said:
Part of the problem is you have a lot of new Mac users, or users new to virtualization, who have no idea what to expect, and who have no idea just how difficult virtaulization can be.
Click to expand...

I think that you've identified a major part of the problem and also agree with darkone's observation that "IMO half the threads seem to be written by people who bought a mac, and want it to be a PC."

I guess that this is a testament to the success that Apple is having in selling Macs and as a result of that we're getting a large influx of PC users. Hopefully, in time, they will come to understand that being a Mac user is more than just owning the hardware.

Being part of the Mac family also means a different mindset and approach to doing things as well as helping each other in a civil and educated way.
 
darkone said:
IMO half the threads seem to be written by people who bought a mac, and want it to be a PC.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, Parallels is being marketed as something that does just that - e.g. (from the Parallels website - my comments in italic):
It just works!
* New! 3D Graphics lets you run today’s most popular PC games on a Mac (so that would include anything on the current amazon top 5 then?)
* Updated! Connect your favorite USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 in any OS with the new USB connection assistant (elsewhere we see "Use any phone, MP3 player, camera" - more hostages to fortune!)
* Shared Networking enables you to seamlessly connect your virtual machine to the Internet through any connection (Actually, thats fairly safe, but I'm sure someone could find an exception - the word "any" could have been avoided there)
* Updated! Shared Devices enables you to connect all of your favorite peripheral devices to any OS (Again, unwise use of "all" and "favorite")
Click to expand...

I think this is the main problem - what they have achieved with the product in such a short time is truly impressive (and they're clearly in a race with VMWare) but their marketing department really needs to turn down their hyperbole generator a couple of notches, and start qualifying their statements a bit more. Heck, I'd be happier if my "real" PC connected to USB devices and networks as seamlessly as parallels claims to :-)

If I invent a car that can drive 150 miles on a pint of gas I might be popular - but not if I sell it as going 200 miles on 3/4 a pint of gas.

The other continuing problem is the lack of any "changelog" or bug tracking system that would let users know what had been fixed in each new version, what was going to be fixed.
 
itsdapead said:
Unfortunately, Parallels is being marketed as something that does just that - e.g. (from the Parallels website - my comments in italic):


.
Click to expand...

Its obviously parallels fault for having uninformed customers. Reading webpages is too difficult, please hand it to me with lettuce, pickles and no onions please, those make me break out.

Wait, you mean to tell me I can't EAT parallels?

Crap.


/sarcasm for anyone not getting my point. Its that a lot of people don't seem to understand fully the program they are seeing, and all they understand is zomg a program that lets me be a pc!
 
PrinceZordar said:
. . . all I wanted was to be able to run QuickBooks Pro without rebooting. I had that under 2.5, but under 3.0, I can't access my Windows partition at all. Whatever Parallels did to my Bootcamp partition, it apparently blew away the HAL.DLL.
Click to expand...

QB Pro is also the only thing I use Windows for. I have no problems with 2.5 so I have no burning desire to upgrade to 3.0. One question: Why are you using Bootcamp? Doesn't this just make things more difficult?

Thank you,

David
 
buzzdat said:
Want to play games? Use BootCamp. Games are the only real reason to use BootCamp, IMHO. Or pick up a console - XBox 360 or Playstation 3.
Click to expand...

I am in complete agreement. Sadly, though, from Parallels' perspective, I suspect that gamers are where the money is.

David
 
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