Parallel Our Sights


I downloaded Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta 2 and loaded it on my Intel Mac Mini. This is a brand-new product that lets you run Windows (and several other operating systems) in a window on your OSX desktop. (Click the photo to see a larger version of the screen shot.)
Having used Microsoft’s Virtual PC before, I always look at products like this with a cynical eye: Virtual PC ran okay on my iBook, but the performance was generally lacking. Parallels is supposedly designed to take advantage of the virtualization capabilities within the Mac’s Intel CPU, so I was hopeful when I loaded it.
Installation was fairly simple. Parallels grabbed about 4 GB of disk and 256 MB of memory by default. Both of these parameters are easily changeable through the configuration screens. I loaded Windows XP Professional, and it seems to run fairly well.
I did not load any applications yet; I wanted to see how it handled simple things such as Internet surfing, and it did just fine.
For some reason, I could not get it to recognize the Macs on my network (including the host Parallels was sitting on), and the Macs didn’t see the XP instance. The XP instance could see the Macs in Windows Explorer, but when I tried to connect to them the application hung.
Another fairly serious challenge I ran into is the fact that Parallels crashes my Mac every couple of hours.
Another issue is that there does not seem to be any sound drivers within the Parallels environment. This presents a problem if I want to view or listen to Windows-only media.
Of course, this is beta software and I should expect some trouble, so I can’t whine too much about it. Regarding that point, I see that a new version of the software is up on Parallel’s site (I am running version 2.1.1658.24 and the version up as I type this is 2.1.1658.30) so maybe they addressed some of the weirdness is there.
All of this is abhorrent to Lisa, of course, who believes that the only thing that should run on an Apple is OSX. She just shakes her head when she sees a screen like the one above. 🙂

jtl