Parallels Desktop 3 > PIECE OF CRAP

3.0 is the very first version of Parallels (including betas, and I installed every single one of them) that has not worked flawlessly for me right away. It's spectacularly unusable, crashing within minutes of starting it up 100% of the time.

 

I don't see trolling on here. I see a lot of very disappointed customers. For $50, people expect a product to work. Sure, it's working for some people, but if you understand low-level programming, you know that problems with memory pointers (i.e. poorly tested code) and memory corruption bugs are very inconsistent. Even if only a small fraction (5%) of users are having troubles with random crashes, that's too much. It speaks of buggy, quickly released software.

Now, what will be interesting is if at the Apple World-Wide Developer Conference on Monday we see Jobs announce Leopard will have something like Parallels built in. In that case, the reason for the hasty and buggy release will be all-to-clear to me.

 

I bought the upgrade for the updated USB support, I want to use my PodXT with Reaper in Windows. Installed it and still does not work 'error 10'.
Had a try of Vmware fusion and my Pod works fine. When are these USB devices going to work in Parallels !!!!! Or will this be version 4 after another paid for update ????

 

It gets my goat that there are so many fanboy clowns coming on here with their sample size of 1 and defending this obviously shoddy product.

Well FWIW here is my equally valid story, sample size of 1... despite parallels 2.x series trashing my boot camp partition twice, getting stuck in windows without keyboard or mouse support, kernel panicking my mac etc etc I stuck with it and finally got it working.

So yesterday I upgrade to v3 and guess what? It doesn't work at all - IT IS COMPLETELY USELESS FOR ME! Forget 3d support, or blackberries, or phones or anything else. Simply booting my VM and trying to install the new parallels tools crashes the VM every time without fail.

It is a f@#king useless, steaming freshly laid turd of a program with more bugs than a congolese jungle.

The instant vmware final is released they will have my cash, and I will know I'm dealing with a professional company with a proven track record of delivering quality, tested products.

 

OK, let's not call it a "lie", let's call it a mega dose of marketing spin. The reality is that you can only work on an application so long without money coming in so you have to make a decision at some point as to how much you can stretch your morals to make more money. They needed more income so out comes a new version (not an upgrade, so you must PAY) and then comes more money so now you can continue to work on the things you should have fixed prior to release.

I love Parallels but I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad I read these forums before I spent the money on the new verison. I have already downloaded Fusion and I'm playing with it now. If it meets my needs, I'll quit messing with Parallels until I see those people on here who have been complaining, post new messages saying their issues have been addressed. If that doesn't happen, I'll either stay with the 2.X version forever or go with Fusion. Whichever meets my needs.

Parallels has come a long way in a short time but they should have started with more capital. Under Capitalization has killed many a promising company.

Harry

 

Thanks to everyone for posting. As someone who has not purchased Parallels yet but have have been reading these forums in anticipation of a purchase I now realize it's better to wait and look at alternatives.

Those people who claim that marketing is about half-truths and you should know better need a reality check. You can only mislead your customers for so long before they revolt. What kind of society or business practice are we building if we need to scrutinize every statement someone makes?

Like another poster I also wondered why I had to Google to find this forum rather than seeing a direct link on their homepage like with many other software companies.

While it is true you can't make everyone happy, I've been counting the number of individual negative postings vs positive and I'd say it's overwhelming.

 

Oh trust me, the VM devs don't need motivation. Go look at their forums. Don't see this kind of hatred on their forums. Why? CAUSE THEIR SOFTWARE WORKS. And it's not even an offical release.

Man, Parallels has gone down hill fast. And you fan boys are part of the problem. I suggest everyone having a problem go download the FREE open beta of Fusion. Then come back and get a refund from Parallels.

Oh Fusion does not support 3D gaming. Yet. (Parallels doesn't either. They just claim they do.) So if that's your desire then it's back to Boot Camp.

 

Actually why not take it "overboard"? ATT was taken to court over their false ad campaign about "fewest dropped calls in America". Twice.

What Parallels did is no different. False advertising. You mentioned "limited 3D support". I think you need to read the ad copy again. I didn't see the word "limited". I saw "Runs the Hottest 3D games on the market". 5 times no less in my email. And in every press site that reprinted Parallels' press release. And that's not counting all the other claims they made that have turned out to be "limited" in scope. So please.. stop defending them.

And has one support guy come here and explained what the hell happened? Or at least said a "we're working on it". Or how about an apology?

And think about the next guy looking for 3D gaming. it's not like Parallels gives you links to these forums. You get that AFTER you paid. So he reads the glowing press (from Parallels cause the reviews aren't out yet) and buys. And guess what.. he gets pissed. And comes to these forums. Only to be called trolls by you fan boys (and I suspect many of you work for SWSoft).

 

SO I'm going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and assume they purchased their windows.


Why aren't you off demanding a refund? My dos games don't work in windows!


What about XXX security hole last week? It could have HARMED YOU!

Oh wait, thats what patches are for you say? But didn't windows claim to be "stable" and "secure"? Why did I get a BSOD?!! HOW DARE THEM!

 

Dude... give it a rest. Your posts are no longer making sense. Get some sleep, then start fixing the bugs on Monday.

 

Amen. There are a lot of folks like me, who aren't trying to use new features...we're just trying to get Tools installed in 3.0. I don't think that falls into a "problem with expectations" area.

 

Same here. I don't care about playing games on my Mac. If I wanted to play games, I would have bought another PC. I have an XBOX360 for that anyway.

I just want it to work as well as it did in 2.5. If 2.5 worked fine, and 3.0 completely disables my Windows partition, that's not an upgrade.

 

Makes perfect sense.

My parallels also works perfectly fine within its capabilitys for me

 

How cute. So now people have to insult other people just because 3.0 works for them and not for you?

I'm sorry if 3.0 doesn't work for you. Demand a refund then AND GROW THE FREAKIN UP.

 

I was able to install the tools only by starting WinXP in safe mode (press F8 during boot). Actually, this is nothing new for me - I've had to do this for the last 4 releases. After that it has worked, but no impressive improvement over 2.5. USB voice/sound is still poor. What happened to 64 bit and multi processor support supposedly coming in the "paid" upgrade and already in Fusion? I don't care about 3d graphics - virtualized PC gaming can never match a dedicated gaming PC (not even a Mac under Bootcamp does). For me, 3.0 is basically stable, but still hasn't corrected the deficiencies of 2.5 in USB support and has added relatively little useful new features.

 

Actually my DOS games work perfectly fine in Windows .. just a little tinkering. But the fact they don't work isn't a issue for Windows.. besides that, those games were designed to work on a legacy platform (DOS) not Windows NT based systems.

A better parallel to your analogy would be "My DOS game doesn't work in Windows 95". See in this case, it's a game designed for an old system not working on a system it was promised to work on.

Better yet "Half-Life 2 doesn't work on Windows XP even though XP was promised to have DX9 support".

The problem here dippyskoodlez, is that you're just reading 3 or 4 words into a post and replying. I don't think you understand the true nature of this topic. Parallels promised more than they delivered. If they had said "Play today's hottest 3d DirectX 8.1 Games" .. no one would be mad. But they didn't. They promised today's hottest 3d games. Which leads one to assume (especially when they hadn't published a list during pre-order, and had closed off the beta during this period).

And everyone seems to be saying how massive projects would overload a forum if it wasn't closed beta. I wonder how large projects like cPanel manage with their bleeding edge releases? Enough "newbies" play around with cPanel to flood the forum with the slightest problems.

Anyways, I don't seem to understand why some are hellbent on insulting those with legitement concerns. I would like to see dippyskoodlez banned from these forums for trying to start a flame fest (and succeeding in some topics).

Just my point of view.

Cheers,

P.S. I own my copy of Windows XP.

 

Install boot camp, dualboot with Windows and install VMWare there until its final for Mac lol ...

Parallels is really a joke as a company .. When I read that you have to pay more than half of the full price for an upgrade I skipped it and went for Fusion .. unbelievable.... especially since USB still doesn't work 100% (MUHAHA)

 

Gibraltarmonkey are you going to skip Mac OS X 10.5 when it comes out and go for Windows since Apple will charge full price for an upgrade?

 

Personally I don't use Windows anymore at all .. I do dualboot for two applications I need for my company, but for Virtualisation I use VMWare Fusion now ... I don't give a s*** about the full upgrade anymore and won't even chase up my activation key - Which I don't even have gotten yet (even though promised in the welcome mail)

 

you know I was thinking about that.... but remember how short their pre order period was? maybe they were were scared that if you actually tried the product you wouldnt buy it even at discount...