Bit of a mixed bag so far:
- Boot Camp Support - Does not boot properly, failing soon after Mup.sys (when booted into Safe Mode). This is with Vista, but it mirrors previous failures related to ACPI support that I have posted on before. Just noticed I need to install Parallels Tools first - this should not be necessary.
- New Properties Page - Looks nice, but still cannot view and change properties and have them take effect on next boot. Instead, the user is completely locked out of properties until the VM is shut down.
- Parallels Tools Stability - No longer crashes on installing the video driver - excellent.
- Auto Resolution Changes - Mostly works, but I still see scrollbars appear from time to time - not sure under what circumstances yet.
- Transparent AZXCV mapping - Hallelujah! I can't tell how many times I've flubbed that, especilly when copying between Windows and OS X.
ACPI support would make running Boot Camp partitions, restoring from other PC's, etc all much easier. When will we see this happen?
As for the interface, it's a mess. The entire paradigm seems awkward and forced into a "one window per instance of the application". That window is a single virtual machine. This leads to all sorts of awkwardness:
- A window must always be open, or the program quits. This is absolutely inappropriate for a document-based application. Your "documents" are VM's. I should be able to open several, close them as I want, and not have any open, but leave the program open (if I want to check preferences, or the version number, etc).
- VM's launch into their own instance of Parallels, which makes the memory settings in "Preferences" and "Properties" redundant. It's also confusing as to whether Preferences changes affect all copies of Parallels or not, and what happens if changes are made to two separate running copies - who "wins"?
- VM Catalog is rooted to an existing VM, which makes it conceptually a child of that VM - this is the opposite of what should be conveyed. VM's come from the catalog, not the other way around.
- Cannot launch the program without an "untitled instance" showing up to root the VM catalog to. Again, this should be a separate window.
Fundamentally, I should be able to open several virtual machines at once, in one copy of Parallels. I should be able to select "Open" and be presented with a list of known machines, with an "Other..." button to open ones that are not listed, and "Get more" button to download premade images from the internet, within Parallels. Known machines should be listed with their name and type, and if running, a screenshot of the current state. Opening one of these should then open the Virtual Machine in a separate window, all in the same instance.
As for properties, according to interface guidelines they should be a sheet on the VM window - I shouldn't have to hide what I'm looking at, but it should be directly connected to that VM. This is exactly what sheets are for. Properties should be changeable at any time, and the user should be notified as to which can take place immediately, and which will take place on the next boot.
This makes the interface much more straightforward, builds on established interface conventions both in the OS and several previous VM programs, and increases user flexibility by removing the modality of the application.
