Parallels Is Ignoring Us

Tom - I think you're missing an opportunity in what I said. They are owned by a large company with a reputation. Think of them as one more butt to kick when you're not getting results at the immediate vendor level. A parent company has clout, money, and skin in the game. Don't like the local manager? Go to the regional manager, and so on. It's an escalation path for grievances.

 

It saves me the money from buying a PC so its worth it to me. The only reason I have windows on my comp is because I use Fedora and VB.net at school. otherwise my macbook would never see any windows programs if it was up to me.

 

I'm happy. Whats prevents me from being very happy :

1) No 3D
2) No session-only harddrive (or however VMWare calls this, where the drive is reset after reboot)
3) Windows inside Parallels crashes on suspend/resume of VM.

 

Parallels is Ignoring Us (reply)

I'm happy with the product and use it understanding it is a work in progress, but it's far superior to having to work with two different systems. I stayed with 1970 until 2 days ago. I've not used Parallels for technical support and have found that this user community has been the source for any issues I have - which is essentially what I have found with many many other programs.

For what I've invested, $80, I would expect a little better support, but at this point I believe the company is spending the majority of its resources building a more stable system, testing countless variations of hardware and software to find usabilty issues, and many other things. The assumption that everything will work when the core operating system is changing, Bootcamp is a beta and a work in progress, and that this company can respond to every inquiry, etc. should be taken into account. Let's stop the conspiracy theory - there seems to such a theory for every problem that ails the world.

I for one have had far worse experiences with much larger companies- Microsoft, Quicken, Adobe, etc. Sure, I've been able to reach them, after a wait, but in all honesty, my problems have always been resolved by working with the vibrant user communities that support the products. I've gotten better solutions from forums than technical help....particularly technical help outsourced to overseas call centers.

In every community there is a disgruntled portion of clients.....some say they complain only to make the product "better" while others seem to need an outlet to vent, well, because the anonymity of a forum allows it - but would they act like that person to person. I updated to 10.4.9 only to see my brand new MacBook Pro 17" reduced to a non-operational $2,800 paperweight. Did Apple solve my problem? Nope - there solution was to wipe the drive an start over. But a number of posts on this forum, MacRumors and Mac OS X Hints gave me a solid solution. Was it a conspiracy on Apple's part to get me to spend money. No. Was it a conspiracy on Apple's part to trash my system? No. Are they a large company? Yes, and should I expect perfection? No. I'm used to mediocre support and there products cost hundreds or thousands more than parellels.

What should be enjoyed is the community that exists and would allow posts like this one where the intent is to raise emotion. In many countries and for some companies a post like this would not be allow. Celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit and drive for new technologies and recognize when you're on the front edge or bleeding edge sometimes you take the bullet.

Let's focus on helping each other and posting positive items of support. My grandma used to same something about getting more things with sugar than.....

well, you get the idea.

 

Silence is not alway golden...

4.) No word on USB problems prevents me very much from being happy :-(

I have recommended Parallels to a lot of people and - in general - think that it´s a great product. However, I really dislike the silence on certain issues.

Having posted here (and people, please correct me, but this IS the Parallels Support Forum!) there was no reply at all, despite a lot of other people posting USB problems - all with the same error message.

Then I have contacted Ben who was kind enough to forward my mail to support. Finally, "somebody" got into touch with me and I did my best to point out the problems & to describe the issues as complete as possible (e.g. that the same device HAS already worked in some previous build on 10.4.8 but not with latest under 10.4.9 etc.). After a few mails forth and back, there was suddenly silence again. Nobody telling me "hey we are working on it" or whatever.

USB problems persist now since > 4 months and I cannot use Parallels for around 50% for what it was purchased because of this. And with all respect to the development team: That is not making me happy...

Cheers
Tom

 

Dear cp1160,

while I agree with most of your post, I think some people here do have real problems but still don´t react overly agressive. It´s just that they want to know what will be adressed when - possibly with some kind of roadmap.

If you read my previous post, then you may get the idea: When I purchased Parallels in December, I was extremely happy, because *everything* I needed worked great. Then, I had to upgrade OS X and switch from the RC to the latest release version of Parallels - and since then, essential things suddenly did not work anymore.

I haven´t blamed Parallels for that and hinted several times on my observations, even told support about what I think my be the problem - but all they wrote was: We need to purchase such a USB device. Okay ... I even sent them an adress where to buy it, but needless to say that this was the end of the discussion. Parallels have so far neither aquired such a device (which I know because I am in close contact with the respective company) nor tried to find the problem together with me... (I am betatester for some much bigger companies than Parallels and offered my help).

Maybe sugar is just not right for everyone...?

kind regards
Tom

P.S.: I will support Parallels as long as possible (and haven´t asked for any refund) but if this basic problem persists, there won´t be any other option for me than to check other virtualization products sadly...

 

Its a mixture...

1. Its a good value product which (basically) does the job.
2. I bought it last summer and have seen significant increases in functionality, for free, since then
3. This forum is probably a self-selecting sample of people who are having problems and/or trying to do more advanced things than the majority of users
4. Virtualisation is a complex area that - before Parallels - was mainly used by IT professionals on PCs. Suddenly supporting a lot of (on average) not-so-techie Mac users must have been a culture shock.
5. By definition, some people are using //s for running odd bits of legacy software or third party USB hardware. Its hard enough getting a 'phone to sync on a kosher windows machine sometimes...

On the other hand:

1. Its good value, not "free" so there is no excuse for poor/unresponsive support.
2. By offering BootCamp support, although much requested, they have opened a huge can of worms. You can't treat a regular windows installation like a "Live CD" - that will boot up in whatever machine you drop it - and not have problems. Use virtual disks folks - amongst other things, they're a snap to back up before you upgraede //s. If you find you need two copies of Windows because of activation issues, or have to buy Vista Extra Expensive Edition because of silly EULA terms, complaints on a postcard to Microsoft.
3. If you're going to have a much-trumpeted, public beta test program then the code must already be pretty robust and stable. You can't scream "Try these cool new features!" at the top of every web page and then turn around and say "well, you installed beta software at your own risk" when it goes wrong. You can't ask people to supply feedback and not acknowledge it or provide some sort of bug/issue tracker or release notes. Some new features (Boot Camp, universal drag-and-drop) were released as beta long before they were ready. C.f. VMWare's Beta program for Fusion which has been much lower key.

 

Guys,
On what facts do you base the assumption that support is bad? Because a few people posted their frustration on forums 2-6 months ago?
Let's take for example 100 people that write to support. 95 of them are happy, 5 of them think that they didn't get enough attention. Now, 2 of that 5 people come to forum and express their frustration here. Mind that the rest 95 people are happy and have no reasons to post anything on forums - support is working as expected, nothing to post about.
So, in the case above, is support really bad?
Please mind also that support is constantly improving, it's not something we can leave without attention and say "let it be". With more and more people using our product we always need to keep support on par.
So let's not stick to some outdated posts and polls. If you are really experiencing some problems with our support - you are welcome to write me or Tom (http://forum.parallels.com/thread10584.html).

 

This sums up exactly how I feel about PD.

I've used VM software a lot in the past, while the majority of PD users I know are using VM software for the first time. Some of the limitations are not a big deal for me, since I expect them. I've seen people who say they had problems getting some obscure device or piece of software working under Parallels Desktop admit later on that they had problems with it on their Windows PC

Internet forums are also a bad way to judge a product, since they usually have two types of people: People who are so into the product that they are cheerleaders, and people who are having problems. The vast majority of people are doing okay and have no need to post about it - the programs they need work, and they aren't pushing the software or hardware to its limits.

Heck, PC World named Parallels Desktop one of their Reader's picks of the Year recently. That speaks volumes right there.

I think Parallels Desktop was the second best thing, next to the move to Intel, to happen to Macs in the past two years. I know many people that would not have switched if Parallels Desktop wasn't around.