Parallels 4 is released

It depends what you need to use VM for.
If your work is mac oriented, then you buy mac and apps for mac, use VM just for backup and not for serious job.
I realy dont excpect that my VM works better then my host OS.
I also dont excpect to play games with all extra effects, it is kind silly thinking that everything will work super-duper.

I used Parallels 3.0 and had no problems at all, but my work on VM was just webapps based, because i needed IE, so i just needed som WinXP on who i can work on.
For everything else i use OSX.
And i think that is right way to use it.

If you have to work on Vista every day, buy yourself PC.

I tryed VMware 2.0, and it was very slow, browsing on Win explorer was poor, it has problems connecting on host OS partition, it had delay about 2-3 seconds.
Also clipboard was not in sync, and that was realy disability for me, so i switched to Paralles 3.0, right now instaled 4.0, and will see how it will work.
Upgrade process want ok, all my customization and data of winxp are stored and workin properly.

My // version 4 does not let my aluminum keyboard "=" key above the number 8 in the keypad to function in any windows application. Any suggestions. I really like this key in excel.

Bob

Well I was pretty excited when I noticed that version 4 was released. Thanks to all of you for posting your experiences, I'm staying with version 3. Having Windows recognize a hardware change would be disastrous. Imagine having to reactivate Windows, Office, ACT!, and about a half dozen ACT! Add-ons that charge a fee every time you change hardware around. This is the whole reason I'm using Parallels: to keep Windows exactly in the same state it is in...

Thanks for saving me a whole lot of trouble TUAW!

My 4.0 installation took a long time, but was virtually problem free - I received an "unable to convert Virtual Machine" error but the installation completed, started, loaded Parallels Tools, and ran without error. I just completed a full day of work in Parallels - pushing Vista pretty hard with Outlook, multiple Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, Powerpoint and Adobe PDF docs running simultaneously in Coherence mode alongside Safari and Omnigraffle in Mac OSX. All I can say is wow! Each app performed nimbly and felt as if they were all running natively. Not a single hiccup. I am very pleased with this upgrade.

I tried parallels, plus cost of Micro$oft tax. Didn't like either. CodeWeavers Crossover has worked much better for me, is easy to use and if that weren't enough, it's cheaper too.

Upgraded to Parallels 4.0 last night. One comment: glad I have multiple backups!

The install was not nice. For some reason it could not convert my vm. Then I had to restore from a backup after removing Parallels 4.0. After rolling back to Parallels 3.0 then that would not work. Eeek. Backups are great....then did the Parallels 4.0 uninstall again, reinstalled 3.0, and whew, got back my 3.0 with vm working.

Try again? Sure. This time it worked....runs fine, seems a little faster (not sure how they measure this as 50% faster though). Bummer, had to reactivate (always hate doing that) Windows XP after the conversion. Seems like the conversion process could be better in that regard. So, XP is working...now lets play with Ubuntu.

Installed fine, but, to my dismay, Parallel tools is not easy...still tinkering with that....but I doubt I will get compiz desktop effects to work....

My dilemma...who will get there first (to full graphics support for things like games, and linux compiz effects)? VMWare or Parallels?

And when????

Installed 4.0 yesterday. Then i started upgrading my Window XP Prof. Bootcamp VM. Took a while but all went well. Feels faster and smoother. Then i configured 4 cores, no problem.

(No, i haven't tested any 3D Stuff - definitely will this afternoon)...

Now i am quite optimistic that i can migrate my solaris and debian test machines (2-dual core opterons) - was not possible since they must reflect 4-core systems for staging tests before going into production.

... and i now upgrade the macpro ram from 12GB to whatever is possible....

Definitely worth the 40 bucks upgrade fee. (not on my macbook pro, parallels 3 runs ok on that machine).

Upgrading V3 virtual machines seems very buggy. Process hangs if the VM tries to launch programs on startup. Dragon Naturally Speaking audio setup wizard no longer recognizes internal microphone, but the speech recognition works anyway (have to shout). Seems to have lost compatibility with the medical management program, Intergy. Does recognize both processors.

It appears that if you upgrade to Parallels 4.0 and your original virtual machine was VirtualPC, then you will not be able to install the mouse driver included in Parallels Tools. That leaves you with an incomplete installation and a non-functional mouse. This was not an issue in 3.0, but discussions on the Parallels forums have yet to find a solution other than reinstalling Windows from scratch.

http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=31176
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=31165

I've given up on Parallels because of these constant upgrade fee's for new versions when users of previous versions are left when buggy software that they clearly have no intention to fix.