Parallels Desktop version 3

Reviewed by Ted Bade

http://www.parallels.com

Released: June 2007.

$79 USD

Requirements: Intel-based Macs only, Mac OS X 10.4 or later; 512 MB RAM; 70 MB Hard Drive Space for software plus drive image(s); CD-ROM/DVD-ROM.

Strengths: Easy to use, easy file sharing between Mac and virtual PC, ability to move data and OS from your old PC, great recovery features.

Weaknesses: Won’t be as fast as running directly in hardware.

For a demo of this product: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

Introduction

The latest version of Parallels Desktop for Mac OS X offers a lot of features that make using any Intel-based OS on your Mac a lot more convenient. Parallels Desktop makes setting up and controlling the virtual machine a snap. Any Intel Mac users who has a need to run any other OS, Windows, Linux, or even some of the older ones, should seriously look at Parallel’s Desktop for Mac OS X. If you have or are planning to switch to an Intel Mac, Parallels offers the ability to bring your old PC’s OS and data along. This is one terrific program ☺

Parallels does its work by creating a virtual machine, essentially a program that runs along with Mac OS X that provides the resources to run the Guest OS. This means that you can run the Guest OS concurrently with Mac OS X and all it’s applications. BootCamp, Apple’s solution to running Window’s XP and Vista, requires that you reboot your Mac. Parallels lets you run simultaneously. My only concern on this topic is processor power. If you need a lot for what you are doing, you might be better off rebooting and using all your Intel cores for the project. However, if you are a typical Windows home user this won’t be an issue and Parallels Desktop is an excellent solution.

When you run Parallels for the first time, it begins by offering options for creating the first virtual machine. Since my Mac already had a BootCamp partition, it was happy to access that partition and use the data in it. Parallels adds a few files to the Windows BootCamp data, and sets up it’s internal data to allow the virtual machine to boot using this partition. The good news is that the partition is still usable to boot directly into and that doing this means that Parallels makes a hard drive file to work from. The bad news is that XP (at least) recognizes this modification as a change in hardware and I had to call Microsoft and get yet another code to let my copy of XP work. It is a minor annoyance, but the Microsoft Customer Service people seemed to understand when I explained I was experimenting with an Intel Mac and various options for running Windows.

(Virtual machine configuration tools)

If you plan to install XP or Vista from a CD, Parallels streamlines the process for you, although it still take a goodly amount of time. The program includes an Express installation feature that asks you a few questions before you start, then automates the process of installing Windows. That is to say it automatically inputs the data required during the installation, clicks yes for you and so forth. Once you give it the data, press go and take a long coffee break, when you return, Windows might be up and running.

Until the Parallels Tools are installed on the Window’s image, your mouse and keyboard can work in only the Guest OS or Mac OS. Once they are installed, the program gives control of these items depending upon where the mouse is. It is pretty slick. Parallels adds a couple of utilities that let the virtual PC perform as well as it can.

I also installed a version of Linux during my test. The installation process was a lot more complicated, but it worked okay. My lack of experience with this type of installer was more an issue then anything else. Which leads me to one point about using a virtualization program like this. It is up to you, the user, to understand the issues with an installer.

Parallels has made the most common installations, Windows XP and Vista, easy. If you have a need to run another OS, you need some experience with it, or in a business environment, someone that does. Hopefully, if you plan to install an odd OS, you will be familiar enough with it to make it worth your while.

Parallels offers some very useful features that make working with virtual machines a lot easier. Some of the more important ones to me were “coherence”, file sharing, adding commonly used window Apps to your favorites list or dock, snapshots of the drive image, expandable rather then set drive images, and the utilities for bringing you OS and data from an older PC to your Mac. I will talk a little more about these next.

Coherence is a really nifty feature that hides the Windows desktop. So it appears you are using Windows applications without running Windows. This feature supports XP, Vista, and Windows 2000. When you turn this feature on, rather then seeing a window which contains Windows OS and whatever applications you have running, the window for the application sits on the Mac OS X desktop, just like any Mac application. Of course parallels is running whatever version of Windows, but you don’t have to see it. I found this mode a lot less cluttered then running in windowed mode. Instead of having a window containing Windows and within this a window for the application. You just see the window of the application. So, without seeing the Window’s desktop, how does one run an application?

Parallels offers a couple of nice solutions to access programs. First of all you can have the Windows Start bar reside opposite where you have the Dock placed, or just above the Dock. This is handy, but cluttered. You can also keep icons in the Dock for the Window’s based applications you regularly run. With Parallels running, you can start these applications by clicking on their icons in the Dock. (Of course, this feature works with or without coherence turned on).

The major complaint of BootCamp is the inability to easily share files between systems. Parallels makes this a real breeze and adds a few nice features as well. You can copy from a Window’s document and paste into a Mac one. You can also drop a file onto a Window’s application to open it there. Parallels also allows the user to set up preferred applications (Win or Mac) that are the default for opening a particular file type. So when you double click on the file, the right application opens. This would be very handy in an environment that sometimes works with documents that require a Window’s application. You click on the file and the computer runs the proper application. This makes working with both operating systems very easy. So easy in fact that I wonder why any company wouldn’t buy all Macs, just click and go. The user doesn’t even have to know what OS is needed!

Invariably, when running Windows, something goes wrong. You install a program and it over writes some important System file or some other thing goes wrong. Generally, when things suddenly start going wrong it is safe to assume that the last application you installed or a recent thing that was done when using the computer is the cause.

Besides it’s own bugs and issues, Windows seems to have attracted a lot of malicious software. Viruses, spyware, Trojans, they can all cause issues with your Windows machine. In the Window’s world, reformat and reboot are sometimes the only solution. However, when using Parallels Desktop there are some options to easily recover. First of all, you can make a copy of your virtual Hard drive in the Mac OS X domain, then just replace the affected image with the older one. You might loose some changes, but you quickly get back to where you were.

Parallels offers a “Snapshot” feature that can easily get your system back without the problem. When you use Parallel’s Snapshot feature you capture the state of your virtual machine at the moment. It doesn’t make a backup of the hard drive image, but records what is there making it easy to go back. This feature is useful if you plan to change the OS in any way. Before you start, take a snapshot. Make the change and see how things go. If you like it, just keep going, if not, you can return the virtual machine to the state it was in when you took the first snapshot. If you are doing a series of actions, you can take snapshot at various points of change, giving you the ability to return to any point along the way.

The Snapshot is like a sequential backup. The successive images only refer to changes and don’t include all the data. This is also a space saving way to back up your guest system. Take snapshots as you use it, if you realize something is not going well, go back to an earlier point. This makes recovering from goofs and issues really easy.

If you don’t have snapshots in use and plan to add something to your guest system, Parallels has an “undo disk feature. This feature remembers the state of the disk image when you turn it on. It then records changes as you do whatever you do. When you are done, you decide to leave the image the way it is or revert to the way it was when you started. This feature would be useful if you are trying to see if a piece of software works and it doesn’t, or if you are playing with a beta version of something. I even imagine if you were planning to visit various URLs on the Internet, you could erase what happened simply by reverting the drive to it’s starting state when you are done!

Another method of recovering is to clone your Virtual Machine. What this does is makes an exact copy of the machine as it was when you clone it. Keep the clone around, so when someday, you realize that things are really a mess, delete the current machine, make a new copy of the clone and begin afresh! You could choose to clone the drive after you have installed all those essential pieces of software that you trust. Just remember to save any files you created in the virtual machine you decide to delete to old one! Better yet, keep the old image around until you are certain all your important data is transferred. Parallels offers a utility for transferring files from a drive image without actually booting that image, so you can get what you need anytime.

You cannot use the snapshot feature if you have undo disk turned on and vice-versa. If one is active, the other cannot be. Also, neither work with BootCamp partition systems. The clone can be made of your virtual machine at any point. With these ways to recover from malicious software and errors, working with Windows is a lot easier.

Just be sure to not clone your system after you install a virus ☺

Now for something really terrific for people moving from a PC to an Intel Mac; If you are a switcher and would like to bring your old operating system and data files along, Parallels offers the tools you need. As part of the Parallels Desktop for Mac OS X package you get the Parallels Transporter package. This application can bring your older OS and lots of other data from your Windows or Linux machine over to a Mac. It also imports BootCamp images from other Macs as well as third party virtualization drive files. (For instance the competing virtualization program as well as older VirtualPC application hard drive images.)

Using the Parallels transporter application requires a bit of know how on the part of the user. You need to install and run an application on the source computer (your old one), then find a way to move the resulting file onto your Mac. The application supports several data transfer formats. I think the biggest problem will be finding one that works easily on the PC! Transfer options include: networking, FireWire, or any removable data device (like a CD or DVD). If you cannot use a network to move the files you need to be sure that your removable data option has enough space to store all the data that is being moved.

The transporter application makes changes to the data so that the old OS will work on the new hardware. The program can handle many hardware changes but they provide a means of installing additional drivers if this comes up. The biggest limitation of the Parallels Transporter system is that it won’t bring the entire package over. You are limited to 2 or 4 Gigabytes of data depending on if your old system was Fat16 or Fat32 format. However, it does get your data and OS up and running. You can then install any applications from that older machine that you really need to run. I would suggest only installing those applications that have no Mac equivalent, allowing the switcher to learn to use the Mac stuff. With this feature, there is now no excuse to no move to a Mac. You can bring your old PC along as a virtual machine.

While this is pretty common in the virtual machine domain, expandable drives are a real benefit. What this means is that when you create a 32 GB partition for your virtual machine, it only takes up enough space to fit what you install on it. If you only install 2 gigabytes of data, that is as large as the file is. However, as you add things to your machine, the size increases as it needs to, up to the maximum.

While I am not a big fan of compressing hard drive data, Parallels does offer a feature that allows you to compress the data on your hard drive image, so that it take up less space. This would be a real benefit for anyone that has limited hard drive space and still want to run a virtual machine.

Another handy tool included in the package is Parallels Explorer. This utility allows the user to transfer files in and out of the virtual hard drive image without running the OS that is on it. Of course, you will have to know where that file is located on the virtual drive! You can make this task easier by creating a folder in the root level of the hard drive image to put things that need to be transferred later.

If you are cruising the Internet on your Mac and come across an application that you might like to try on your virtual machine, download it, move it to the hard drive image, then next time you run you can install it. Parallels has a utility to enable Spotlight to categorize the files on your virtual machine. Which means you can use Spotlight’s easy features to locate files on your virtual machine hard drive image!

My Experiences

The next question to consider is, how did it perform for me? For typical applications, running XP in Parallels was as good as running them on any PC I have used. By typical I mean things like the web browser, or iTunes, or a photo organizing program. The only issues I ran into were when I tried to run higher end graphics, such as a 3D game. Some games do work in Parallels. The people at Parallels have a web site area that list the games they have tested and those users have tested. You can check out this page by visiting: http://forums.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=5592

I couldn’t get any of the newer graphic intensive games to run. In my opinion, if you have the need to run a graphics intensive application, such as a game, you need to boot into BootCamp or own a gaming PC. I could be wrong, but I believe that the typical switcher from Windows to Mac won’t be doing it to play games on the Mac, and for them, Parallels will work great.

The hardest part of working with Parallels is the installation of the Guest OS. This has little to do with Parallels, since the issues of installation are really created by the OS itself! In the case of installing XP or Vista, Parallel’s has made the process a lot easier. Although it still takes a while to complete the process, you don’t have to stay glued to your Mac while the process is taking place. This makes the process so much easier to deal with!

(Coherence mode - is that Win’s Solitaire on my Mac desktop?)

Coherence is cool! You can still enjoy your Mac OS background without that pesky Window’s window on it. I tend to hide applications I am not currently using, to reduce screen clutter. I can do this, with Parallels as well, or I can go into Coherence mode. Coherence mode, just keeps the window of the application open, you don’t see the Windows desktop. I even went as far as turning auto hiding on in the Window’s Task bar. (I do the same for Mac OS X Dock. While I don’t recommend it, I had both taking up space on the bottom of my screen. I didn’t find it that hard to get to the Dock/Bar of my choice! I saw a little hesitation when running several Mac applications and Parallels in coherence mode, but it wasn’t anything terrible.

Conclusions

Overall, Parallels is a terrific application. It works very well. If you have need to use some Windows applications it will perform well for just about any needs. If you are switching from a PC to a Mac, it not only will serve you very well, but will be a real money saver, since you won’t need to buy a new fresh copy of Windows to use on the Mac. That alone is worth the cost of Parallels. If you have the need to run any non-Mac OS X operating system on your Macintosh, I highly recommend Parallels Desktop for Mac OS X. It offers the tools to make doing this as easy as possible. Parallels Desktop is a top notch application and a real asset to the Macintosh community.