First look at Parallels for OS X
This morning, I quickly installed Parallels for Mac OS X. After the installation completed, I pointed Parallels at my VirtualBox drive image and Parallels converted it to a Parallels disk image. The conversion took over an hour, but it was well worth it. Everything converted over without a problem. I just logged into the Windows environment and I was right where I left off in the VirtualBox environment. I did notice right off the Aero effects worked where they did not work in VirtualBox. This is not a big deal, but it does make Windows 7 look much cleaner and cooler.
Parallels seems to be running much better than VirtualBox when running the same applications, but I am going to hold back my full judgment until I am able to get into the office and run the environment for a full day. So far, everything seems to be working without a hitch.
Parallels does run differently than VirtualBox. I now see all my Windows programs in my OS X dock. I am not certain that I like that or not, but I hope that I can turn that off if it becomes too annoying. Initially, Parallels wanted to run Windows 7 in "Coherence" mode, which was a seamless integration between OS X applications and Windows 7 applications, but having run virtual environments separately, that was a bit confusing. I quickly figured out how to switch to "Window" mode which keeps Windows 7 applications in their own window. I may have to give "Coherence" a try later and see if I can get used to it.
I have 14 days to run Parallels before I have to make a decision on whether I want to purchase it or not. I am still considering if I should give VMware Fusion try, but I think I will run Parallels for a week before I make that decision. For right now, I am leaning towards purchasing Parallels even though I like VirtualBox, but I have a few more tests to run, like how does it perform on my external monitor at the office - at home, Parallels runs like a champ.
Comments
You'll need more than 4Gig of RAM!
Hello Sean,
Here's my 2 cent on this,
If you've got a machine that has 4Gigs of RAM, I would recommend using VMWare. I've tried Parallels with a 4 Gigs MacBook Pro and its not enough to have an efficient working environment. I use Windows 7 every day for work, and with Parallels I would really notice the fact that I was in a virtual machine, it would regularly lock up and I needed to restart it daily.
Also if you have a Windows BootCamp partition, I would recommend not using it as you're primary virtual machine, having a Non BootCamp VM allows you to map your desktop and other folders between the two, witch is great if you collaborate with both Mac and Windows users, For example: you can edit a Mac file in your Mac, and switch to Windows and send it with Outlook.
You can read my post about it here: http://blog.bmcintyre.com/2010/03/installing-parallels-5-again/
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