I cannot express enough my total outrage at Parallels (Nova Development) at their treatment of customers who bought their copy of Parallels at a retail outlet after May 1. While they are offering a free upgrade, you have to jump through hoops to get it, and it will take 8 to 10 weeks! OUTRAGEOUS!!!! Here is their canned email to the upgrade request. Your Parallels Desktop 3.0 upgrade registration has been received. Please follow the instructions on your printed upgrade form and mail all the required items to the address provided. We will notify you via email once we receive your materials. If your upgrade is approved, you will receive a download link via the email address you provided. Please allow eight to ten weeks for processing. Eight to ten weeks???????? I can't afford to wait that long, and will probably have to fork over the full upgrade price. And what is worse, even though I registered my product with a valid e-mail address, I never received a notice - I just happened to stumble on the announcement. This process should have been much easier. While I don't mind CONFIRMING my eligibility by snail mail, I can't wait that long. What they should do is provide a temporary key that expires in 8 to 10 weeks. If they "approve my upgrade", then I can re-activate with the new key, otherwise, I have to pay up. But to treat me like a 4th class user and wait weeks and weeks because I didn't buy directly from them is simply inexcusable! I assure you I will never have a good word to say about their company, no matter if their product is good. I used to own a fairly big mass-market software company, and I can assure you, we would never treat our customers like this. As I said, OUTRAGEOUS, especially when there are simple download based solutions like I suggested. BOO HISS!!!!
If this is the case, then my company will probably have to ditch Parallels. Having to use snail mail is bad enough in this day and age, but a bait and switch still 8-10 weeks "please wait while we hope you give up and buy the full version again" isn't good at all.
On the plus side, 3.0 is currently so broken that you wouldn't want it now anyway. Maybe in 8-10 weeks the thing will actually work. Count yourself lucky you aren't suffering with the current broken build.
