Most requested Parallels features

I chose USB 2.0 as my main wish for the wish list. Second would come Boot Camp support. My laptop currently has two Windows VM running under Parallels and one running under Boot Camp. It would be nice to be able to stay in OS X and be able to run a single install of Windows on Boot Camp but be able to use Parallels on that install.

 

My #1 wish is Boot Camp support.

The ability to boot the boot camp partition from parallels, with maybe a different windows hardware configuration (to avoid the real hardware / virtualized hardware mismatches).

This would save A LOT of hassles and disk space, since I now have to resort to Boot Camp for gaming, and to paralles for working (don't want and can't reboot into windows each time I have to work a on XLS doc in excel!).

 

Really hard to pick just one. But I decided on USB 2.0 support if it supports passthru. I don't know if this is possible with Mac OS X.
Biggest problem with Mac OS X is device support. Have some device with no Mac driver. Would be nice to be able to plug it in and run it through Windows. This happened to me with a cell phone modem. I eventually ended up getting a different phone which mostly works with Mac.

Others high on my list include Vista. But I figure that will be there without me asking for it. And 3d, directx support. Vista needs it for some of the built in apps, as do many Windows apps.

I also run Linux so I don't want folks to get the impression that its all Windows. I haven't noticed anything like parallels tools for linux. Mouse in particular doesn't flow between windows. I'm using Ubuntu.

 

Bluetooth "sharing" ?

Just to be curious, since this seems like a very obvious "wish", I'm surprised I haven't seen it elsewhere. Has there been any interest, or discussions about being able to take advantage of a bluetooth adapter in the underlying OS.

Making a longer story short, I'm trying to use a http://www.sena.com/products/legacy/parani_10/ which is a bluetooth to RS-232 adapter.

thanks,
charles

 

VMWare / VirtualPC drive image conversion

It's not on the list but if I could convert VMWare or VirtualPC images to Parallels format we could dump VMWare for our development purposes.

 

I vote for:
1.) USB 2.0 support
2.) Drag n' drop
3.) Burn CD/DVD

PS - I have been able to find a way of transfering files via a shared location where I listed my MAC desktop (MacBook Pro) as a shared path, then logged into my MAC from Parallels/PC via the Network Neighborhood, and i can see what's on my Mac Desktop. Pretty cool...the only thing is it automatically closes the folder window after a short time. I am able to go back to it manually, but for some reason it wants to go away after 15-20 seconds or so.

Also I am still not able to download the most recent version (after 1884)...says I've got to reinstall because of an unknown installation error.

 

3d support. Outside of running games I have no use for windows at all.

 

Support booting VMs from network shares

Support booting VMs from network shares.

I recently found out that if the hard drive image is put on a network drive, that Parallels will not boot from it giving an error about being unable to determine drive geometry.

I would never have imagined that it didn't work. Given you have a Macbook with as little as 60gig, and you want to have potentially multiple virtual systems running in Parallels, such as Vista or Linux or XP or all of the above, you can quickly run out of space. Using network accessible storage sounds like a reasonable solution. Except that for some odd reason, accessing the hard drive image from the network drive isn't support. This should be fixed so it can work. I can't imagine that this could be very difficult.

 

My vote

I voted for USB 2.0 as my "most important", however I would also find the following features EXTREMELY useful:

-Firewire
-CD/DVD Burning

Also, another question: Does anyone know why my 4 processor Mac Pro only shows up as one CPU in Windows XP?

 

I heartily agree with this, firewire is my #1 wish. <<keeping fingers crossed>>

 

I don't see why Firewire or CD burning would be high on the list. Firewire devices are supported natively by the Mac more often than by Windows or Linux.
And the Mac has plenty of good CD/DVD burning software.

Most of the other things on the list are things that you could not do on the Mac without the given feature. 3d support allows many programs such as games and others to run that otherwise can't run on a Mac in any form. USB 2.0 support is useful for many devices which are Windows only and don't provide Mac support.

 

how about Mac OS X support? hosting Mac OS X although legally we can only host it in an apple machine

As for 3D graphic support, would it leverage on the host GPU power or really simulate a real video card? It will be very cool as we can't recognize what's real, what's virtual in the future!

 

Well, when you consider that a macbook (what I own) only has 2 usb and 1 firewire port, and you also factor in that when running at a full load I'll need to use a firewire audio interface with windows only software controlled from 2 usb devices, the situation becomes a bit more clear. Until a comparable audio interface for USB 1.1 AND/OR comparable, compatible software arrives for either mac or pc, I'm stuck trying to peice together a solution, the missing peice for which is Firewire support in Parallels. (Alternatively, I would be happy with full trackpad support in Bootcamp, but that is neither here nor there. )

 

Internal Mac BlueTooth support, that's what I'd like

 

I'm with you on this, you're not the only one... I'm sure there must be more. I would also like to have access to my firewire devices, including my audio interface, in my applications that are not available on MacOS. Firewire is a standard.. most Pc's have it alongside USB these days. One of the reasons I bought my MacbookPro was because of the promise that Parallels offers of a "one stop" solution. It certainly made my life easier and freed me up to take just one reliable box with with me most of the time. It's so close and I'm sure it's gonna get there. However, it's disapointing to see firewire seems to be lower down on the priority than I think it should be. As far as audio devices are concerned, most of the pro devices are firewire, you ain't gonna get the bandwith out of USB 1.1 anyway for any serious work. I haven't tried bootcamp.. I would have stuck to my original laptop if I wanted to hang around multibooting. Parallels makes the workflow almost effortless. Gosh.. I was expecting support for my firewire 800 port by now! Lets keep our fingers crossed...

 

Almost no PCs have firewire built in. Go look at the Dell site. Thats why Apple was forced to add support for USB even though its not as good as firewire.

 

Linux tools: for copy paste between guest and host and better graphic drivers for Xorg

 

Waiting for Bluetooth!!

I'm interested!! I was crushed today to discover that my brand new Bluetooth GPS can't be used by Windows mapping programs in PDM. Mapping is the ONLY software I need that is limited on the Mac. Actually there are some great programs available but I just want to use Streets and Trips or DeLorme's Street Atlas because my company has both available. I even tested a friend's USB GPS puck and was thrilled how well it worked in PDM with these programs, so I went ahead and ordered a Bluetooth device. Oops, feeling a bit stupid now for ASSuming it would work "the same" without a wire.

Please oh please someone figure out how to make Bluetooth work!!

 

Amen to Linux file sharing and copy/paste. And full USB pass-through.

 

Waiting for Bluetooth!!

I should add that I'm in awe of how well the two mapping programs I mentioned work in PDM. Microsoft Steets & Trips launches TEN TIMES faster on my 1.83 GHz Macbook running XP under PDM than it launches on my 3 year old 1.6 GHz Dell laptop, ~2.5 seconds versus 25 seconds on the Dell. It feels verry snappy and much faster to work with. In DeLorme's Street Atlas, the USB GPS device worked just fine, as did the voice commands provided by the routing function. Just amazing. Frankly I'm a little worried about the fate of projects like Route Buddy. Why bother making great Mac software if your differentiation is just a step away via PDM? A great Mac mapping program would have had a nice niche before, now with PDM the niche is smaller. At least for now it has the Bluetooth advantage!