Walt is great… a few things to point
out with Parallels though.
He compares it to Virtual PC. There
are two major differences (if you want to get to the nitty gritty technical
level)… VPC uses EMULATION (having to emulate an entire processor
function) as opposed to Parallels that uses Virtualization.
Coming from a long line of “emulator/virtualization
software” (VMWare, VPC, Parallels)… and platforms other than Mac
(intel based Linux), I will say that Parallels easily smokes… not just
beats but actually smokes all of the others I have used.
VPC has a nice feature of true dragging
and dropping of files, however, anyone who is coding knows that VPC has issues
with long file names and it will screw them beyond belief. While
Parallels doesn’t have the very simple true “drag and drop”,
it will share files through a virtual folder which is just as efficient and
does not choke on long file names.
In regard to games, people who are going
to use virtualization software probably are not gamers (at least the hardcore
kind). I’ve yet to find any emulation/virtualization software that will
run games or even play video efficiently. However, Parallels does both…
not being a hard core PC gamer (I did buy the XBOX 360 last weekend, and 1K
into it (MS can market that’s for sure), have found that I prefer consoles
to PC gaming anyway.
With that being said, when Apple launched
the NY Apple Store CNBC had a Steve Jobs interview… I couldn’t
watch it in BootCamp, but was able to watch it without issue in Parallels.
The other thing to note that Walt forgot
to mention, Parallels will read your VPC drive images… so if you already
have VPC, you can use your existing WinXP license and installation in Parallels
without problem (I’ve never test this, I have MSDN so XP licenses are not
an issue).
At any rate, I am very impressed with
Parallels in contrast to any other software in the same classification. I
also program a lot so my needs may be different. I only go into Windows
when testing a multiplatform application or to watch something I can only get
with Windows Media.
Parallels has done a great job with a
release so soon after the official intel Mac – IMHO.
Mike
From:
fed-talk-bounces+michael.pike=email@hidden
[mailto:fed-talk-bounces+michael.pike=email@hidden] On Behalf Of Dave Hale
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 6:50
AM
To: email@hidden
Subject: [Fed-Talk] WSJ.com -
Mossberg on Parallels
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB115032684720080578-lMyQjAxMDE2NTEwNDMxMjQ2Wj.html
"Still,
Parallels Desktop is a very good product and a pleasure to use. It's like
having two computers in one, the best of both worlds."