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Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta5

Thorn lets us know, in the comments to the fast OS switching post, that the folks at Parallels have released Beta 5 of their Parallels Workstation 2.1 for Intel Macs. This is the software that lets you run 'virtual' machines on your Intel Macs (including, but not limited to, Windows XP).

So what's new in Beta 5?  Lots:

  • USB support
  • Dynamic screen resolutions
  • Transition cube when going into full screen mode
  • lots of bug fixes
When I get an Intel Mac (probably when the second rev of the iMac is released) Parallels is going on my 'must have' list.

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Thorn lets us know, in the comments to the fast OS switching post, that the folks at Parallels have released Beta 5 of their Parallels...
 

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Donald McDaniel

Concerning the so-called "emulation" using PW Beta 5:
Parallel's Workstation creates "Virtual machines" using the native CPU, etc on an Intel Mac.

This is NOT "emulation" in any sense of the word. ALL OTHER "OS emulators for Macintosh" create only SOFTWARE versions of the various Macintosh devices, including the CPU.

Because of this, PW Beta 5 can run XP or other alternate OSes at near-native speeds (currently ~80% of native speed), since it is not using an "emulated" CPU, such as the various "PC emulators" (like VPC/Mac) for Macs use.

Donald McDaniel

April 27 2006 at 1:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gregory Grant

I've been using Parallels since Beta 2 - I am also impressed with the product. When I first saw the announcement for it I went out and purchased my very first Mac product - 2 Ghz MacBook Pro. I use Parrallels to run WinXP for the last two applications that I can't get Mac equivalents for. Love the product, and not having to carry around two pieces of equipment.

April 27 2006 at 4:29 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
paul

Parallel emulation: The solution to crappy applications & lazy programmers everywhere!

I was so sick of crappy web based applications that only ran on Wintel IE 6.0+. God awful junk, but required in daily business. Now I don't have to carry a second PC or suffer the unbearably slow performance of VPC to run these applications! Only downside is now they will likely *never* rewrite them properly...

I haven't booted bootcamp since I installed parallels, I'm about ready to blow the bootcamp partition away to recover the disk space!

April 27 2006 at 1:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
steve

I don't see whats so great about this. I still can't get it to install from my bootable Windows CD and thier forum is down for whatever reason.

April 26 2006 at 8:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
R Muffet

Why is anyone waiting for the second rev of the _iMac_... ?

The MacBook Pro I can understand, with its heat and whine issues, but the iMac Core Duo is pretty near perfect already, and represents excellent value for money.

Just seems odd to me to be holding out for the second rev.

April 26 2006 at 7:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ih8bg8s

This made me feel feel like I was back back in the Max Headrum era:
"(including, not not limited to, Windows XP)."

April 26 2006 at 2:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Illtron

I'm glad that I don't need a new machine just yet. I think I can hold off at least until the Leopard preview at WWDC, so I can see what it has in store, which will let me know if I really want to deal with Parallels.

April 26 2006 at 2:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mxz

So I have a MacBook with Boot Camp and Windows XP installed on a separate partition. Can I use Parallels to launch XP in a windows straight from OS X? I installed it, but couldn't find a way to link it to my Windows partition.

April 26 2006 at 2:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
stephenju

OS X is so great that everyone wants to run Windows on it.

April 26 2006 at 1:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Apple Retail

Parallels announced 100,000 beta users!!
That shows strong sales in Intel Macs.

April 26 2006 at 1:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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