I've used both Parallels and VMWare both as early adopters, I even use Codeweaver's product when it is possible. I would say I am an advanced user. Mostly I use strange CAD programs, or 3D packages, programming IDEs etc. However, the USB integration for keyboard and mouse in 5.0 is just plain terrible. Neither one work well, despite an otherwise fairly well working product. Case in point... I have a Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet, a Logitech 3button scrolling mouse, a Siatek Eclipse Keyboard and an older apple keyboard. All of these items work flawlessly in OS 10.4,10/5, and 10.6 as well as Windows XP and 7. My standard for everything virtual environment is a vanilla Windows XP x64 with the latest microsoft service packs. The two problems I have (and are most likely linked) is that the mouse has horrible behavior when used in the virtual environment... the standard tracking is fine, but when you click to scroll, or for instance in a program like, illustrator, maya, UDK, video games etc the mouse speed is all sorts of jerky and controllable. for detail applications it is so wild even on the slowest unusable tracking speeds it is unusable because it is A. too slow to track across the screen but perhaps 10-50 times too fast /erratic when tracking for drags, pans, tilts, rotates, scrolls etc. This is what I would call "good behavior" as I spent perhaps the last 2 days just trying to prevent my mouse pointer from turning invisible. My belief this is caused by the SMart Mouse function, that inexplicably I cannot activate or deactivate, but is permanently set to the "automatic" behavior (see picture). My "solution" is to set my logitech mouse as the full time windows mouse, and the wacom as the full time mac mouse, though this makes the use of the crystal or coherence mode impossible and makes using the environment a mentally active experience, just to keep my one mouse from locking up, plus having to have two mice on my already cluttered desktop. letting windows control my mouse does at least let me use some of my programs.... if it weren't for the keyboard failures. All of my keyboard's keys work... just apparently not in most applications in parallels... sort of. Well parallels does recognize the key is being pressed, just the behavior isn't anything you would expect. For instance when I am running May 2010 or 2009 and I click my left mouse button while holding down alt/option the viewport should pan... instead it just does the normal drag-select. However the "file" menu does some sort of flickering when the option key is depressed (see second picture). Essentially all my CAD/3d/art type programs are unusable without capturing the keyboard for the windows environments exclusive use. So, now I have 2 mice, and two keyboards. and some of them kind of work, bot not really. because if I accidentally click into a windows window my mac mouse is now locked in the windows environment and my computer can't use cntrl-al;t to release the mouse. so now I can't escape PC-land without shutting down windows. Is this a known issue, or what? This can't be too much to ask for a product which I have been supporting thru all 5 versions to be able to click, drag and use an option key without going to extreme and contrived measures.
