Parallels 4 anyone?

[randomlinh]

multi-core support... for another paid upgrade.. wtf. I thought we were going to get that in v3??!?? VirtualBox isn't quite there yet in comparison, but either way, my iMac seems too slow to run a VM and OS X side by side well.

Anyone make the jump yet? Upgrades get Acronis and Kaspersky for free, which is nice, but it's Acronis 11, not 2009, the latest one.

This move makes me want to give my money to VMWare instead =(

 

[Kmax82]

Yea.. VMWare got my money before I would give it to Parallels just simply because of the paid upgrade scheme that they seem to be really happy to do. I'll give the trial a whirl and see if it's worth the price, but I'm more than happy with VMWare. I'm sure that VMWare will probably do a paid upgrade at some time, but they had enough common sense to realize that Fusion 2 had the stuff that Fusion 1 should've had. Parallels just doesn't seem to take the hint.

 

[aphex]

Parallels sucks. I lost faith in them about a year ago when Parallels kept acting up for me. VMWare is where its at.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: aphex
Parallels sucks. I lost faith in them about a year ago when Parallels kept acting up for me. VMWare is where its at.

This.

 

[Kmax82]

Well, I'm surprised. I installed Parallels 4, and there are a lot of nice features, and it's definitely much speedier. Doesn't seem to bog my system down as much. I've been using the Windows 7 PreBeta, though, and Parallels Tools doesn't want to install... oh well.. i'll install Vista and see how that does.

I'm gonna try and use it for another week and see if it's worth the price.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
Well, I'm surprised. I installed Parallels 4, and there are a lot of nice features, and it's definitely much speedier. Doesn't seem to bog my system down as much. I've been using the Windows 7 PreBeta, though, and Parallels Tools doesn't want to install... oh well.. i'll install Vista and see how that does.

I'm gonna try and use it for another week and see if it's worth the price.

Holy crap! Supports up to 8 cores plus 8 gigs of RAM! OooooOooh

And 256mb VRAM!

 

[bearxor]

I believe that Parallels is typically on a faster technology path. The cool stuff seems to get put in to Parallels first. VMWare takes it's time to implement it, to make sure it's working perfectly and upgrades from Fusion to 2.0 were free. Honestly, I don't think that will continue past 2.0. I believe 3.0 will be a paid upgrade. I think they just felt really bad for 1.0 users.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Kaido
And 256mb VRAM!

That's the bit that caught my attention. VMWare for example could run Portal with SM2 graphics, but the 128MB of VRAM meant that you had to use extremely low settings. I'm interested in seeing how Parallels will do with 256MB, although I'd never use it for anything besides gaming.

Originally posted by: bearxor
I believe that Parallels is typically on a faster technology path. The cool stuff seems to get put in to Parallels first. VMWare takes it's time to implement it, to make sure it's working perfectly and upgrades from Fusion to 2.0 were free. Honestly, I don't think that will continue past 2.0. I believe 3.0 will be a paid upgrade. I think they just felt really bad for 1.0 users.

Fusion 1.0 was pretty bad compared to Parallels at the time, heads would have rolled if it were a paid upgrade. However I don't think anyone would have a valid complaint if Fusion 3.0 were a paid upgrade.

 

[Kmax82]

Ugh.. more lockups. This is why I moved over to VMWare. I'll keep giving it a try, but it's not looking promising.

It is faster, but I'd rather have stability. It is better than v3 for me though.

 

[Kmax82]

Ok.. one cool feature I do like. If you have anything running in the taskbar on the right side.. when you go into Coherence, it will place those items in your Menu Bar in OS X.

http://www.kennonbickhart.com/...parallels4-toolbar.png

BTW, the Mem, temp and CPU usage is high because I was playing an HD movie, using Flex and Dreamweaver, installing updates in my VM, and backing up to my Time Machine drive. Still very useable. I'm liking Parallels 4 more and more, but I don't know that I want to pay for it. We'll see...

EDIT: Well, a couple more crashes later, and I'm done. I know I ask a lot of my machine, so crashing definitely happens, but when all I'm doing is using it to edit SQLServer, and test in IE... and it crashes constantly.. it's just a bit much. Sorry Parallels...

 

[randomlinh]

I want to add to be clear, I don't mind a paid upgrade... it's just, a lot of the things promised had been implied they'd be part of the previous version. I can't remember off the top of my head, but most of what 3 had, were things implied to be coming to version 2 users... not through a paid upgrade. Then "multi-core support, it's coming!" but in paid form... it just feels so misleading.

The new coherence stuff sounds interesting, and if it's speedier I might use it more. We'll see. Maybe I'll just go back to VirtualBox. I killed it because I was running out of space on my main drive, and running a VM off FW400 is PAINFUL for me, haha.

 

[Kmax82]

Yea.. Coherence is definitely much faster in Parallels 4. It's not super stable with Vista.. I'm installing XP on it now to see how that works, as all their demos are showing that.

I do agree, though, that I hate to give them money for stuff that they always claim will be in the previous versions. And for that, I feel I shouldn't buy it because of principle.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Kmax82
I do agree, though, that I hate to give them money for stuff that they always claim will be in the previous versions. And for that, I feel I shouldn't buy it because of principle.

yeah, that's how I feel right now. It does seem smoother though.

 

[Kmax82]

XP is pretty much butter. This is going to make it quite hard to resist buying.. ugh.. I'm going to do my best though..

 

[ViRGE]

Humm, gaming seems to be a bust. DXCaps says that their VM only supports SM1.4, and TF2 agrees. It's supposed to support SM2.0, so I don't know what's going on.

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Humm, gaming seems to be a bust. DXCaps says that their VM only supports SM1.4, and TF2 agrees. It's supposed to support SM2.0, so I don't know what's going on.

That is weird. Their demo shows TF2 working, but I haven't tried it myself.

 

[ViRGE]

TF2 only requires SM1.4, but all of the good stuff (character animations, etc) require SM2.0. It's as ugly as all hell with SM1.4.

 

[aphex]

Tried it out last night, I dunno its kinda unstable for me with XP SP3, parallels tools doesn't seem to be installing properly either... Hrmph

 

[Kmax82]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
TF2 only requires SM1.4, but all of the good stuff (character animations, etc) require SM2.0. It's as ugly as all hell with SM1.4.

Oh.. yea.. I'm running into bugs still with XP, so I'm back to VMWare. Parallels, I commend your advancement, but please work on your stability!

 

[randomlinh]

err.. wtf, where can I download Version 3 again? My latest copy isn't the latest.. and the downloaded dmg Parallels fetches on update won't open.

 

[Zaap]

Coherence mode is the only thing that makes Parallels worth it for me. With a dual monitor setup, it's slick having the Windows toolbar auto-hidden on the secondary monitor- it's like Mac on one screen, Mac/PC hybrid on the other. I pretty much only use it for DVDShrink and running some home-automation software.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Zaap
Coherence mode is the only thing that makes Parallels worth it for me. With a dual monitor setup, it's slick having the Windows toolbar auto-hidden on the secondary monitor- it's like Mac on one screen, Mac/PC hybrid on the other. I pretty much only use it for DVDShrink and running some home-automation software.

I wish we had better DVD software on the Mac. Still can't beat the Decrypter/RipIt4Me/Shrink combo

What HA software you rockin?

 

[AnthroAndStargate]

I read that Parallels 4 can use up to 256MB of VRAM (I have a 256mb 8600 on a MBP). Is this true? Vmware Fusion 2 can only use 128 and it runs TF2 so so.. if this is true for Paralells I might finally be able to play TF2 without dealing with the woes of dual booting into bootcamp.

Anyone get SM 2.0 to work in Paralells 4 yet?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: AnthroAndStargate
I read that Parallels 4 can use up to 256MB of VRAM (I have a 256mb 8600 on a MBP). Is this true? Vmware Fusion 2 can only use 128 and it runs TF2 so so.. if this is true for Paralells I might finally be able to play TF2 without dealing with the woes of dual booting into bootcamp.

Anyone get SM 2.0 to work in Paralells 4 yet?

It doesn't use your laptop's video card, it uses an emulated video card. So you get 256mb VRAM of an emulated video card.

 

[Zaap]

Originally posted by: Kaido
I wish we had better DVD software on the Mac. Still can't beat the Decrypter/RipIt4Me/Shrink combo

What HA software you rockin?

Yup, I just can't deal without all of those for DVD rips, along with DVDFAB HD Decrypter. One or the other of them handles any and everything. (Although, have you noticed? Lately, DVD Shrink handles just about everything- haven't had to break out the other tools in a long while. Knock wood).


HA software: ActiveHome Pro. I don't care for it all that much, except I have an X-10 based system and it works well for that- just need the software to program the USB master module. I'm going to step up to Z-Wave eventually.