Neglected Step-Child

Be patient with Parallels? Let me give you the situation I face: You have released a product that does not work well with Vista. I purposely bought your product so that I could have multiple versions of operating systems on systems used in two teams for which I have ultimate responsibility. I even went to bat for your product, based on my (at the time) good experience with the Mac product. "This is a company that is forward-thinking, and a company that can be trusted."

Now, I'm stuck with a product that just does not work. I don't care about the size of your company. I only care that I bought your product in good faith (and licensed it for several computers), and that you have done absolutely nothing to step up and fix the problems.

What you've stated is that you don't have the resources to support something you sold. Period. I'm not okay with having to buy software twice to do the same task. That is what I will end up doing. Now I have to buy VMWare for the PCs. I also personally have licensed Parallels for Mac. I will be dumping that too, as I cannot trust your company to do the right thing. In fact, I've already bought two licenses for Fusion. (I find that it runs better anyway.)

So, I don't feel that any one of your customers should be sympathetic to your plight. There was a commitment made that the release 3.0 of your software was going to be "simultaneously" released for all platforms. Then you went back on that. Then it was a statement that there would be an incremental fix to the existing version. No date, and no delivery. It is obvious that the bulk of your development resources went to the Mac platform.

The credibility of your organization is the extraordinarily low.

Joel

 

Almost 8 months since the last workstation update now. So the workstation is still not running very fine on Vista. May we expect a bugfix release that works fine with the new OS or do we have to wait and pay for the next major release? And to what price are you going to sell the upgrade?

Jens

 

Update: Parallels Workstation 2.2 Build 2204 is available

 

Sure,

but this is not a version 3 release which Mac users have for a long time now, even in beta stage.

 

...again a new build/release for MAC - I guess you don't need more comments? Needless to say that I'm very disappointed!

 

I'm wondering if it would be more productive to express our concerns as comments on Ben's blog post rather than in this venue.

 

This does not help either, I did this many times before, exactly when a new Mac release was announced, and no comments from Ben.

Since those comments in the blog are moderated he is able to dismiss inconvenient texts anyway.

 

Rarely do I actively regret buying a piece of software, but I have to confess in the case of parallels workstation this is the case. A 'neglected step-child' does seem to be the best way of putting it.

I've since uninstalled workstation and installed a certain piece of free software others may be familiar with, which actually works. Well. Without the lovely 'oh hey the virtualizer crashed, please email me to the developers who will throw me into a fire' error reports I remember so fondly. Oh, and USB works too.

Why it can manage this while being a free download and workstation can't while being a paid-for product.. Well. Who knows!

 

Hi peten,

I've already switched to VMWare Workstation 6, about six month ago and I'm really happy with it. One day Parallels will come back to Windows but till see that time is already up for them.

 

We prepare new Windows version with very amazing features, details will be available soon

 

John,

abundantly late insight, you know. We have heard this sentence many times before and are awaiting this new version for more than a year now!

As mentioned above, I already switched to VMWare and you can be sure I won't come back to Parallels. I guess many others did also look for alternatives and it will be very hard for Parallels marketing to convince 'old' customers to come back.

Usually this will happen only by offering (very) special discounts for former customers.

 

I am using it already (Parallels Workstation 3)
Ok, I do not want to say something without it is published on our web site, and I understand your situation.

 

John,

that's good for you ;-) and of course I understand you cannot give more information this time.

As you can see from my join date, I'm using or better I've used Workstation 2.x since 2006 but I got no new features the last two years that's pretty annoying.

Your competitors did a better job by enhancing and fixing their appropriate products during this time and of course your customers are not very happy when not getting new features which others vendors already implemented.

 

Yes, we understand this situation, and we will try to do the best to get and overcome them
-- by support
-- by features

 

Wow...

After reading all of these, I' guess its time to start looking for alternatives..

I've actually already played a bit with the free VirtualBox, and it works pretty well... and gets updates more than once every two years...

Unbelievable... promising 'partity with Mac releases' months ago, and now Mac Desktop 4.0 is released, and STILL no new version of Workstation...

I'm not to the point where I've decided to buy something else, but I'm getting close... either that, or just switching entirely to VirtualBox...

Sad, really... they'll probably release a killer update, and no one will be left to appreciate it...

 

tanstaafl,

completely forget Parallels Workstation. Their competitors are miles ahead. We were promised to get a new version last year but nothing available for today in 2008.

Parallels always told us from that point on the Mac and Windows version are on the same code level, updates and new versions will come up more quickly, b****it! We, the customers, were tricked! First we bought Parallels Workstation and afterwards this company totally dismissed development for the Windows version.

I've switched to VMWare last year and do not regret at all. I even uninstalled Parallels and won't return anymore.

I bet one time Parallels will need the Windows user again, if all competitors have placed their products in the market, and it will be very difficult to convince those tricked customers again to buy Parallels products again.

Good bye Parallels!

 

Quoting my own response to a different thread...

Based on posts made in these forums some months ago (could it be almost a year?), the word seemed to be that a new version of PWS would have to wait until after Parallels Server as the overall plan was to move to a more modern, unified codebase based on the PD and PS code.

So, where do we stand... According to the Products page, Parallels Server for Mac is available for purchase. Parallels Server for Windows and Linux is still in Beta. This is interesting in that one would think a single product family based on a single unified codebase should be at more or less the same level of readiness. Moreover, PS/Mac even includes features that must have required some significant Mac-specific development such as the ability to virtualize Mac OS X Server.

I'm inclined to infer that one or more of several things must be taking place:

1) Parallels is, quite simply, throwing the bulk of its efforts at the Mac, recognizing that it is the only platform on which it has any significant advantage over the competition (nobody else has a server product for the Mac and PD still has some feature advantages over Fusion and VirtualBox).

2) Parallels is finding Linux too hard to keep up with. As a Linux user, I cringe at this thought, but it's interesting to note that ever couple of kernel releases seems to require a new/different patch to allow the kernel modules to compile. (For a while, users of VMWare products on Linux had to rely on unsupported community patches to compile there kernel modules, also.) The patch for 2.6.25 also requires a kernel rebuild with specific options set, moving the problem out of the realm of the casual user who just wants to run whatever kernel came with the disto.

3) Parallels is still working on (looking for?) the killer feature for a Windows/Linux product to make it more than a "too little, too late" or "been there, done that" upgrade. This is the correlary to inference #1. Between VMWare Workstation 6.5 and VirtualBox 2.x, all of Parallels early wins on the Mac (3-D, seamless windows) have been done. VirtualBox also takes away the possibility of releasing an inferior product and trying to win on price (arguably, the strategy that PWS was using in the first place). Conversely, if they do have such a feature, this might explain why there has been no formal product announcement, no beta, etc. as the plan would be to simultaneously announce and release, giving the competition no time to react.

Personally, I don't think we'll hear of a release until after (or simultaneously with) the PS for Win/Lin release.

What I can't fathom is what Parallels will do to build a Windows/Linux user base. As it is, the delays and inattention have damaged the trust, if not driven away, many early users. Just winning them back is going to be challenge enough and while the free upgrade may get them to come back and look, there is going to have to be some kind of public commitment to continued support in order to get them to stay.

Honestly, I just wish someone in some authority at Parallels would just come out on the blog and say "Look, here is where we are WRT Linux and Windows. Here is where we are trying to get to. And here is what's keeping us from getting there."

 

I answered out there, and once again
We are working on Parallels Workstation version for very hard, and I think (my opinion) it will be free,

 

John, with respect,

we've listen to this song for almost 1 1/2 year now (could be even longer, not to say more than 2 years now). In the meantime the Maccies have received version 3 and now version 4, Workstation is still on 2.2 and of course still without features other competitors already implemented light years before.

During this time Parallels tried to do some server versions but failed so far - nothing more. This development power had been better put into the release of a new Workstation instead. Once I bought Workstation because it was an affordable alternative to VMWare and now I'm totally disappointed. That said, I had to go with VMware nevertheless 'cause I simply could not wait untill Parallels redeems their promises.

Even if a new version of Workstation would be free and won't install it now and ever since all my VMs are already set up and perfectly running in VMWare. So no need to convert again.

Again, one day Parallels will have to win back those valuable customers they once threw away.

 

I understand situation exactly and understand your position too, but I hope the features it will provide will probably change your mind
I hope so, at least