I've just blown away our system admin showing him my MBP running my newly imported work XP installation in coherent mode They're now top of his christmas list! Wishlist (this is a wish list!): 1. Multiple monitor support that understand the differing resolutions of the monitors in use. 2. Lower memory usage as my MBP only has it's max 4GB and with a 1.5GB XP VM I have 3.95GB memory used! Hmm that's about it!
Well the only two options I have for memory are system memory (ie 1.5GB) and video ram at 16MB. So to me this looks like the way in which Parallels uses it's memory for windows etc is not particularly optimal. I've reduced the windows colour depth to 16bit so that should help.
Day 1 of using my transported T42 laptop XP build for real use. Here's some feedback. Observations 1) Annoyingly I'd say that multi-monitor support is incomplete and not usable currently. The reason for this is simple - Parallels creates a large single desktop over both monitors (taking the lowest Y resolution of both monitors). This means that when XP opens a window at full screen it will do it across both monitors. Second annoying thing is that modal dialog boxes appear in the centre of the desktop - as this is spanning both monitors then dialog boxes also appear spanning both monitors (half on each). In short the stretched desktop removes the information from windows itself hence the resulting user experience is dire (I'm not a blind mac fanboy). 2) Even with windows running 16bit and the second monitor set to "thousands of colours" in OSX the memory usage of Parallels is high - infact it uses all the free memory, the inactive is not that large, the active portion gets large but the wired area is very large (I assume this is because this is the only way Parallels can get a continous sequential block of memory for the VM). This makes running in cohesive mode/multi-monitor, to be quite frank, a gimmick unless you have over 4GB of physical ram (read MacPro only). This is with a 1.5GB system ram with 16MB of VRAM configured in the VM. For this reason I've resulted in dropping out of using two monitors as I used to use with my trusty IBM T42 in favour of using full screen with just the MacBook Pro's 1440x900 desktop. This does mean that there's not much to differentiate Parallels from other VM products so far.
Actually I found one really annoying point about the stretch desktop method that's probably not encountered unless you do alot of it.. Reviewing documents - using a 90 degree rotated monitor (so it's taller than it's wide). In windows (and mac) it's possible to rotate the screen so instead of, say, 1680x1050 it's 1050x1680 with the desktop rotated too. This means you get an entire page view on the external monitor for reviewing. Exceptionally useful and I'd forgotten about this (we've just started a new cycle thus I'm doing alot of review work currently). With the stretched desktop - this is impossible to implement.
Another issue for wishlist/fixing: When running with two monitors plugged into the MBP then using Windows XP in "fullscreen mode" on the second monitor with an apple bluetooth keyboard it's REALLY annoying that you have to cut an paste between them.. why? Using my Juniper VPN into work on the window VM, I can't get web access (not a parallels problem).. so I use safari running on the mac side on the other screen. So mac:Safari - cut cmd-C then pc:Email - paste ctrl-V or cmd-V normally works but you have to click to switch between the mac and the parallels side (even in fullscreen mode). It would be convenient if you move between them (and no mac window is infront of the fullscreen parallels that the task attention switches to Parallels and to the current focused window in XP. A small thing but annoying!
