Wondered how Parallels works and how to actually get it going? This article is an overview of the Parallels vitalization software and a simple guide on creating a virtual machine.
Parallels Desktop for Mac Review
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The latest beta release doesn’t work here. It installs fine, but when I try to start a virtual machine I get an error message about my RAM configuration not being compatible. I can’t copy and paste the whole message now because I am not in OS X.
What kind of system do you have?
Windows XP works perfectly! And it’s nicer to open it in fullscreen with VirtueDesktops.
There was ip conflicts problem when I tried Ubuntu.
Works great for me on my Mini and Macbook with XP.
Even works with USB.
I have a USB dongle for a high-end commercial program(only reason I need windows) all I have to do is just plug it in and it is instantly passed through and recognized just fine in Windows.
It’s works very smoothly, and is easy to set up and configure. I used it this summer when I brought my Macbook to do some field-testing of a system at work. We have some software that runs on Linux and some software that runs on Windows, so it was great not to have to carry around two laptops. At one point, I needed to run two pieces of server software (one Linux and one Windows), and it was nice to be able to run both on a single machine, and still get some coding done in OS X.
Since installing parellels on my iMac I’ve had trouble with it spontaneously rebooting. Got rid of parallels and my problem went away.
Has some quirks, I also have sometimes this rebooting problem, also older versions of parallels tended to lock some usb ports irrevocably so that osx could not get rid of open programs using this ports (scanner programs, finder etc…)
parallels sits very deeply in osx, and if stuff like that happens, things become nasty.
As much as I love parallels, it definitely does the osx stability not good.
Parallels is an amazing piece of software, to be sure, but it still has a few missing pieces that can be a deal-breaker for some people, such as lack of support for playing CD’s in Ubuntu.
Edited 2006-09-11 10:22
Well the missing pieces for many, are still lack of decent usb2.0 support
and for others 3d support which no vm solution currently can support
and for the rest it is that you need an extra image so that you cannot run bootcamp partitions within parallels, which is nasty due to Microsofts unlocking feature (currently it is hit or miss if microsoft allows you the unlocking of two instances of XP on the same machine)
I’m surpised Apple mention it in an official capacity on their website. Support for OSes is a litle flakey. A friend of mine had his host MacOS 10.4 crash on him due to parallels.
Myself i’ve had no end of trouble with apparently supported OSes. Fedora 5 won’t work with certain memory allocations – and even the “nopentium” boot option fails upon upgrading the fc5 kernel.
solaris and opensolaris are a pain to get working. disable dma usually works for the installer and sometimes the runtime. setting the screen size is also a matter of luck – works for me in solaris 10u2, not solaris express b44.
you certainly get the impression that even of vmware is not currently as fast as parallels – it is much more stable and supports what it says it supprts. understand vware are working on a macos version of their vm – looking fwd to it.
So what’s with USB 2.0 support in the latest version? The datasheet has a cryptic “works at near native speeds”…
Still waiting for Vmware’s release…
but the kernel locking/usb locking issues have become way better, I assume parts of the problems people had with their dual prozessor mac pros which have been resolved also resolved some dual core issues.
One thing is, that my webcam still does not work in parallels which is not a good sign of usb things to come.
But knock on wood as for now things look better than they used to.
“Fisher-Price buttons of Windows XP” comment, so basically he got the Fisher Price OS appearance on the Fisher Price ‘my first computer’?
Article covers the basics, but is a bit lacking on meat – Would have been nice to have seen more explaining to the greenhorns exactly what a VM is (aka an overglorified emulator) as one gets sick of seeing the same questions about supporting video and sound hardware over on the parallels forums.