Choosing Parallels Over BootCamp for OS X

juusan writes "Sysadmin Jeremy Randall outlines his installation and impressions of Parallels for Mac OS X. Is it better than BootCamp? Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini? Does it pass the scrutiny of a fairly picky system administrator? Yes indeed, on all counts."

Comments

Back in Time

[nighty5]

The application looks like something from Windows 3.11

Re:Back in Time

[rdunnell]

While it's running, if it's not in fullscreen mode it actually looks a lot like the MS Virtual PC interface. I suppose that's probably intentional, although that interface was not exactly "pretty."

Re:Back in Time

[outZider]

This is what happens when you put Qt in the wrong hands.

Re:Back in Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, after using a Mac for a while all windows apps tend to look that way. In this thing you were probably looking at something more modern (XP or Longhorn or ME, or whatever's the microsoft state-of-the-art), but I couldn't tell either.

Oh.. were you talking about parallels itself?

Summary: It's OK

[rblum]

And really, not much more to read in the article. If he actually were a picky sysadmin, he'd have looked at such points as "can the VM access the host drive, and how can I stop that". If he had a more than cursory interest in it, he would've looked at DirectX support. He couldn't even be bothered to figure out if his Mac supports certain features.

(Don't get me wrong - that's an indicator that Parallels is fairly good. He doesn't even have to care if some things work or not. But that's certainly not "in-depth")

Re:Summary: It's OK

[poulbailey]

If he actually were a picky sysadmin, he'd have looked at such points as "can the VM access the host drive, and how can I stop that"

Well, can it? Isn't it behaving like VMWare?

Re:Summary: It's OK

[Dragonfly]

I've been using Parallels for a couple of months now on my 2.0 Ghz Intel iMac. Parallels can access a special shared folder, or you can turn on Windows networking on yoru Mac and the VM can connect to it as a server (my preferred method as it doesn't require that you create a special folder and move things in and out of it just so you can access them from the VM).

I run WinXP Pro on my VM and have 512MB of RAM assigned to it (out of a total of 2 gigs in the iMac) and performance is quite acceptable for running Office apps and testing web sites with different versions of IE. Naturally, the more RAM the better, and in an ideal world my iMac would have 4gigs of RAM with 1 gig given to the VM, but that's mostly because I often have Safari, Firefox, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver running under OS X and that doesn't leave a lot of room for Parallels without a lot of swapping.

I know that Parallels is planning to improve USB device support in future releases, but for now connecting to devices over the network works for me.

I'll save you time

[Golias]

Everything TFA has to say.

1. It works pretty good for a version-1 app.
2. It doesn't work well with external USB drives.
3. You get the occasional "beach ball" if you are running other apps on the OS X desktop and have only 1 GB of RAM.
4. The author is "platform agnostic" and really, really wants you to know that.
5. Rumors are flying that Apple might buy them and incorporate this into 10.5, but then again, maybe not.

Everybody who read my summary instead of clicking the link just saved 5 minutes. If a few million of you did so, I just saved a whole bunch of of entire lives!

Re:I'll save you time

[macaulay805]

I vote for you to be a Slashdot mod and put your summaries in every story. Save the world some time (and 40 "next" page link clicks).

Re:I'll save you time

[PatMouser]

I've been running in for a few weeks now (Beta 6, RC1, RC2, and the final production version) and haven't had a problem with the external drive, but I'm using a LaCie d2 connected via my FW800 port, so it's a little zippier. :)

It's a seriously cool product and right now with XP running Word 2003 with one document open, AVG, and the generic Windows XP crap top is showing anywhere from 11.7 to 13.0 percent cpu. That's on a 17" MBP with 2G RAM.

Re:I'll save you time

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Damnit, I just squandered those 5 minutes you saved me reading the comments in the thread.

Re:I'll save you time

[bar-agent]

Everybody who read my summary instead of clicking the link just saved 5 minutes. If a few million of you did so, I just saved a whole bunch of of entire lives!

Go you!

Re:I'll save you time

[habedak]

I clicked the link first, and then I read your summary which said basically the same... so you wasted 30 seconds of my life. I demand this be deducted of your life-saving ratio!

Re:I'll save you time

[Paradise Pete]

I just saved a whole bunch of of entire lives!

Well I know I'm feeling more vibrant. For those of you struggling with Shakespeare, here's my summary of Hamlet:

1. Not to be.

Doesn't "do" graphics

[SuperBanana]

Is it better than BootCamp?

No. For starters, it can't directly access the graphics hardware, which makes it useless for almost any 3D gaming. It also uses an enormous amount of CPU time sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Seriously- XP, sitting doing nothing, nothing open- uses 20% of my Macbook's CPU. In Qemu (or rather, the Q Project build of QEMU), it's under 5%...and QEMU is emulating, whereas Parallels supposedly is using virtualization technology. What the hell?

If only Boot Camp and XP supported external drives (you have to hack XP considerably, unless you're using eSATA, I think)...

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[mgv]

No. For starters, it can't directly access the graphics hardware, which makes it useless for almost any 3D gaming. It also uses an enormous amount of CPU time sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Seriously- XP, sitting doing nothing, nothing open- uses 20% of my Macbook's CPU. In Qemu (or rather, the Q Project build of QEMU), it's under 5%...and QEMU is emulating, whereas Parallels supposedly is using virtualization technology. What the hell?

My macbook only needs about 5% of CPU time using parallels. But that is running windows 2000. Maybe its not parallels fault that XP is doing stuff when its supposed to be idle?

Michael

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[pla]

Seriously- XP, sitting doing nothing, nothing open- uses 20% of my Macbook's CPU.

Welcome to the Windows world. XP, sitting doing nothing, on a native PC install, uses between 4% and 11% of the CPU on an Athlon 64 3000.


it's under 5%...and QEMU is emulating

QEMU (and most any emulator) actually optimizes out XP's OCD-like behavior, resulting in lower idle CPU use than the real thing. Add a moderate load, though, and watch the difference reverse itself drastically. Virtualization should see that 20% vanish into the actual load, while an emulator will grind to a crawl under load.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny. I'm running about 10 different applications right now, and when idle, I get an average CPU usage of less than 1% (only thing that was taking any measurable CPU time at all was Gaim, if you're curious). It's interesting how Windows on Slashdot always tends to be 10 times worse than when I ever use it.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[pla]

It's interesting how Windows on Slashdot always tends to be 10 times worse than when I ever use it.

Well, as the most obvious question - Do you get your numbers from Windows Task Manager, or from something a bit more accurate such as Sysinternals' Process Explorer? I used the latter, with an update speed of 5s (for both the longer sampling window and to reduce its own CPU use). And I find that it does indeed disagree with Task manager. I'll trust procexp over taskman any day, though.

Now you've got me curious, though - I tend to tighten XP to an extreme so probably don't make the best example (though ironically, I manke a good example in Microsoft's favor) Tomorrow I'll try a clean install on a machine at work and see how bad it looks with things like themes, indexing, and system restore left on. I'll give MS a break and not install SQL personal/desktop edition, however (with which Vista will ship enabled, sucking an ungodly amount of CPU and memory).

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[ceoyoyo]

You mean supported BOOTING from external drives? I've got XP running on my mini (haven't used it since the day after Boot Camp came out, to load maps on my GPS). It boots off the mini's HD but everything but the OS is on an external drive.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[ZorbaTHut]

Using procexp, the program that you suggest, tells me that my computer is currently using 7% of its CPU.

3% of that is Winamp, which I did not bother to pause. 1% of that is VNC, which I am running in the background. 2% is "System" - I don't know what this consists of, but considering that I have three windows updating frequently, I don't mind too much. 1% appears to be getting lost in rounding error. Note that this is an Intel system which predates hyperthreading. It is not exactly a powerhouse.

I suggest fixing your computer - whatever's wrong with it, it's not Windows's fault.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[sootman]

It's XP's 'idle' process. Dvorak can tell you all about it.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[joshetc]

you sure about that? My x2 3800+ is using between 0 and 1% CPU resources with 6 IE windows + FF w/ 3x tabs + Aim + antivirus and browsing the web.

wait.. it just hopped to 2% for a split second.

I am using 400MB of ram currently though.. thats kinda hoggish.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[Sithgunner]

Wow, what do you guys eat to get that high cpu cycles for an machine?
Just erase any unnecessary softwares out... seriously it's the best way to make your Windows run stable and fast.

I simply get 0% cpu cycle on my WinXP watching task manager's graph drawing a horizontal line at the bottom with about 300MB of unused RAM on a 512MB ram machine.
It's not the Windows... it's you that's abbusing the system resource.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[bazorg]

Maybe its not parallels fault that XP is doing stuff when its supposed to be idle?
virtualized pwnage!!!

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[Slashcrap]

Welcome to the Windows world. XP, sitting doing nothing, on a native PC install, uses between 4% and 11% of the CPU on an Athlon 64 3000.

You are either bullshitting to try and make Windows look bad, or totally retarded.

This is the Apple section, so either or both seem equally possible.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[Gr8Apes]

Seriously- XP, sitting doing nothing, nothing open- uses 20% of my Macbook's CPU.

Welcome to the Windows world. XP, sitting doing nothing, on a native PC install, uses between 4% and 11% of the CPU on an Athlon 64 3000.

Life isn't as bad as all that. First off, remove all unnecessary services to reduce both your memory footprint and your idle CPU consumption. You'll have to tweak that list a little, but my XP system at home runs in about 100MB of RAM with 1-2% CPU. It also only has 6 services running, and no AV software. It boots up in less than 40s, and that's on a 2.4 GHz P4 w/ 1GB RAM.

As for the no AV, if you don't download anything, don't use MS applications (use Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim instead) and have a hardware firewall or two between you and the internet, the risk of a virus or worm is quite small. (I do occassionally install and run AV software for a check, or when I do download something from an unknown source)

Lastly, if you're running McAfee or Norton AV software, switch to something else. Both of those are resource hogs, both in memory and CPU. AVG seems a better product in that regard on all counts.

Re:Doesn't "do" graphics

[sootman]

>> Is it better than BootCamp?

> No.

*sigh.* Once again, kids: there's no single criterion with which you can determine a universal correct answer to the question of 'better.' What I use Windows for doesn't require graphics acceleration. So, let's look at this another way:

Is Boot Camp better than Parallels?

No. It forces you to reboot.

See?

You'd use it in the same place you'd use VMware

[Sycraft-fu]

Or VPC because that's all it is. It's just a virtualizer. The advantages are you don't need to leave your main OS, you can have multiple guests, even runnig at the same thing if your system is powerful enough, and it probaly supports some kind of snapshot system, like VMWare. The disadvantages are of course the same as with VMware, mainly speed and hardware support. At least until VT support gets ramped up or hypervisors become popular you aren't going to get anywhere near native speeds. Also at this point the hardware in VMs is pretty low level. If you have a nice pro 3D card or multi-channel audio card, your guest OSes will not have access to their features.

Like Boot Camp, I think Parallels it getting more hype than it mertis just because it happens ot run on OS-X. Yep, it virtualizes a computer and lets you run Linux or Windows at a reasonable speed. Ok great, same thing as VMWare on a Linux or Windows host. Certianly not worthless, but nothing that's really news.

Use a native install (Boot Camp) if it's speed and access to hardware that are the prime requirements and you are willing to spend time booting back and forth. Use a virtualizer if you just need incidental access to the other OS and can take teh speed hit.

Re:You'd use it in the same place you'd use VMware

[nathanh]

Or VPC because that's all it is. It's just a virtualizer.

Except Virtual PC on the Mac is actually an emulator and not a virtualizer. With VPC the CPU is emulated so it is mind-numbingly slow. Parallels on the Mac will virtualise the CPU if your CPU supports VT-x (although everything else is emulated).

Re:You'd use it in the same place you'd use VMware

[Sithgunner]

I think it's news because for once, it's a chance to switch the main OS for daily use. You can just buy a Mac and be done with it, but many people still need some specific apps on Windows keeping them under Windows for the past decade and on.

If this can run Windows apps fine (non 3D ones) then it's about time quite a number of people can try to make a switch off of an OS that they were stuck for a decade.
And don't start with Linux which is an immature desktop OS.

Re:You'd use it in the same place you'd use VMware

[Sycraft-fu]

It shouldn't need VT to virtualize the CPU. It needs it for a more full virtulization, but you can still run almost all Ring 3 code straight as VMWare does. Also not sure what good VT support would do it, as I am unaware of any Macs with VT capable chips. Currently only Pentium D 900 series have VT, as well as some new Core Solos. The Core Duos do not. The Core 2 Duos, which Apple will presumably use in desktops will, but until those ship, support for it is rather moot.

Re:You'd use it in the same place you'd use VMware

[nathanh]

It shouldn't need VT to virtualize the CPU.

It shouldn't but it does.

Also not sure what good VT support would do it, as I am unaware of any Macs with VT capable chips.

The MacBook Pro, for one.

The Core Duos do not.

You are wrong. Shush now.

Re:You'd use it in the same place you'd use VMware

[JazzCrazed]

According to this brief (PDF) from Intel, the Core Duos do, as stated in the second paragraph of the introduction:

The Intel® Core(TM) Duo Processor also includes support for Intel® Virtualization Technology which is a set of hardware enhancements to Intel server and client systems that combined with the appropriate software, will enable enhanced virtualization robustness and performance for both enterprise and consumer uses.

Re:You'd use it in the same place you'd use VMware

[Sycraft-fu]

Interesting, I wonder why they don't list the feature on their processor matrix. It's listed for Pentium Ds, but not for Core Duos, hence my belief that they didn't include it. More interesting to me is the screwed up Slashdot moderators who rated the smarmy Mac user who just said "you are wrong" to me with no backing as "informative" when your post, which actually provides relivant citations remains ignored.

I guess arrogance is favoured over substance.

kernel code?

[Anonymous Coward]

someone that knows more than me please comment on

http://macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=6136&op=&thres hold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=110387

Re:kernel code?

[x2A]

This looks like a load of huff about nothing. Loading such a module requires root access, but if you've got root access, you can put code into the kernel yourself, you don't need parallels installed for that. If you can insert this module and "exploit" it, then you may as well just write your own module and insert that.

Re:kernel code?

[kscguru]

The security risk is FUD by someone who doesn't understand virtualization, hypervisors, or modern OS design.

Virtualization demands that you be able to run arbitrary code at the most highly privilaged level. (for the pedants, QEMU is an emulator and does not do this; KQEMU is a virtualizer and does have this access). VMware uses the same mechanism - look at the device drivers it installs (the source code is shipped on Linux) and you'll find very similar code. That said, any device driver you install can provide the same access; do you trust Acme Inc who made your network card or video card?

The only security risk is if someone was able to overwrite the binaries on disk that get loaded via this mechanism. I assume they get installed chown-root to protect against this, but I have never actually run Parallels to know.

Re:kernel code?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a little info here off the freshmeat page for KQEMU, just in case there is any confusion about this poorly researched post.

About:
KQEMU is a full graphical front-end for QEmu.

Re:kernel code?

[kscguru]

kqemu is a kernel module accelerator for qemu, http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/kqemu-doc.html , written by the author of qemu.

The fact that some KDE fan chose a name that's already in use just creates confusion. Ah, the joys of the open source world.

I installed Parallels also

[tool462]

And it does everything I need it to do, and does it well. I can VPN to my company's network and can run all the software I need to get my work done, and it runs plenty fast. It also handles the older games I still play with no noticeable problems (starcraft, civ 3, etc). I plan to try out some new games like Oblivion soon, just to see how well that runs. I'm not as optimistic about that, however.

The key advantages to me, over using something like BootCamp, is that I don't have to reboot my machine to access my Windows only stuff, and I minimize my risk of cross contamination. I'm less likely to hose my OSX install if I destroy my Win2K install (which I am prone to doing). :) I avoid computational and memory intensive stuff on the Win2K VM, so that potential downfall doesn't cause me any trouble.

Re:I installed Parallels also

[Rude Turnip]

I think you might be the right guy for me to ask then...Right now I'm typing this on a Dell Inspiron 8200.....1.6GHz Pentium 4-m, 768 megs of RAM, 32 meg NVIDIA card. I basically run Excel all day and a little Word. I want to install Parallels on my Macbook Pro, which has a 2GHz Core Duo and a gig of RAM. In your opinion, will Windows XP under Parallels on the MB Pro be at least as "snappy" as my current setup?

Re:I installed Parallels also

[tool462]

I'm running Parallels on the exact same setup, and all that stuff runs fine. I do plan to upgrade to 2GB of RAM on the MacBook Pro, though. I will start to have slowdown issues if I have, say, iTunes & Safari running on OSX and then run something memory intensive on the Win2K VM, which is set to use 512MB of RAM. You may not be quite as fast as running it on your Dell, but any slowdown shouldn't be noticeable. At any rate, Parallels has a free trial code, so you can give it a shot without any cost but your time.

Windows Addicts

[QuantumG]

Friends of mine just switched. They have fiddled around with Bootcamp and Parallels. Personally I think this stuff sucks. If you're trying to give up drinking you don't take an occasional belt from your hip flask, even if everyone else around you is still drunk off their ass. I've seen this kind of behaviour with Linux users. They try the live CD, decide they like it and set up a dual boot system. After using nothing but Linux for a month they find they miss some app they only have on Windows (typically a game) and reboot to use it. Then they surf the web a bit with Firefox and may or may not notice how much better it runs under Windows. Reluctantly they reboot into Linux and feel the withdrawl symptoms. Soon they're installing VMware or Cedega but it's just not as good as the raw experience. A month later their Linux partition is just a big waste of harddrive space, so they delete it.

Re:Windows Addicts

[GeorgeMcBay]

So.. what you're saying is that Windows is a better OS than Linux for your casual user friends?

SHOCKING!!

Re:Windows Addicts

[Xuranova]

There is something inherently wrong with a design of an OS when you're asking the user to be strong willed and willing to make sacrafices (in this case happiness) in the name of the OS. I have a great idea: how about you show your friends a great alternative to the program they want to use in windows or make their system run firefox as smooth in linux as it does Windows. If you can't manage this task, you need to step down from your high horse and accept that all your friends aren't willing to make the sacrifices that you are in the name of supporting Linux. Sheeple will admit their flaws, will the zealots?

This is being typed in Safari on OS X.

Re:Windows Addicts

[Deadguy2322]

So, what you are saying is that people who want their computer to just do what they want it to without fucking around for days are sheep? Assholes like you are the primary reason Linux is a joke. Wasting your life to strong-arm your computer into almost doing what you need it to acceptably is just plain stupid, and idiots who advocate doing that just so they feel vindicated are the real sheep.

Re:Windows Addicts

[Anonymous Coward]

If your casual friends needed Windows apps, then why did they switch from Windows? There are legitimate reasons for running a different OS, being a Microsoft hater isn't one of them. If they switch to Macs because they hate Microsoft, they'll go back to using a Windows PC in a matter of weeks.

Re:Windows Addicts

[eugman]

That is stupid. The truth of the matter is there are some programs for which simply no good alternatives available on linux . Some people must have photoshop. Some people want to play halflife 2 without paying a monthly fee to cedega. People might also have alot of thier information locked in propietary formats. Also it is nice being able to go to best buy and get something you want.

I suppose the next thing you'll do is call them wimps and sissies because they can't handle linux. Wanting to use certain applications is a legitimate exscuse. I apologize if you were sarcastic.

Oh and for the record I run on Ubuntu myself.

Re:Windows Addicts

[Lucractius]

forced to use a particular os for an app not available on another one. sounds to me a lot more like coercion than addiction.

Addiction would be if they cant give up using the OS because it has some trifling little feature no other has... like say mac os x's Expose than i most sinceearly wish to have on every machine i touch *sigh*

Re:Windows Addicts

[x2A]

Some people use their computer for the applications, not for the OS. The OS is there to support such apps, not dictate what you can run. Stuff that runs better under Windows, I use Windows for, and stuff that's better under Linux, I use Linux. It's called being pragmatic, you may need to look up that word.

I notice that you're being forced to post on slashdot because about:blank doesn't support posting messages.

Eugh.

Re:Windows Addicts

[RedBear]

After using nothing but Linux for a month they find they miss some app they only have on Windows (typically a game) and reboot to use it. Then they surf the web a bit with Firefox and may or may not notice how much better it runs under Windows. Reluctantly they reboot into Linux and feel the withdrawl symptoms. Soon they're installing VMware or Cedega but it's just not as good as the raw experience. A month later their Linux partition is just a big waste of harddrive space, so they delete it.

And?

Oh, I forgot, there is a standing moral imperitive that we're all supposed to be using Linux because Windows is eeevil. Yeah, I used to use Linux as a desktop too, then I found that I wanted to use things like Photoshop CS. So I moved back to Windows, and now I've moved to Mac OS X. Oddly enough, either of these operating systems suits my needs, I just happen to like OS X and dislike Windows. The fact that Linux didn't suit your gaming friends isn't their fault. You just happen to be a person who doesn't want to use your computer that way. If you were honest with yourself I'm sure you could come up with several functions or pieces of software you've simply lived without in order to keep using nothing but Linux over the years. Linux is a great alternative but it is far from perfect for many desktop users. As for me, I simply got tired of fighting with my computer to get it to do what I want.

Re:Windows Addicts

[Slashcrap]

Sheeple will admit their flaws, will the zealots?

This is being typed in Safari on OS X.

I just wanted to quote those 2 lines from your post next to each other for the delicious irony. Only a fucking sheep and a zealot would feel the need to tell us what application and OS he used to type his worthless post.

If you can't manage this task, you need to step down from your high horse and accept that all your friends aren't willing to make the sacrifices that you are in the name of supporting Linux.

I was thinking of switching to OSX. Unfortunately I wasn't willing to make the necessary sacrifice, namely being a stuck up little wanker with a superiority complex.

Re:Windows Addicts

[MightyYar]

You didn't provide an example of a good Linux replacement for Photoshop. Gimp is good enough for retouching stuff that will go online, but not for print-quality stuff. We're not talking about addiction here - it's all about using the right tool for the job. People that use hammers to drive nails are not addicts, they just don't see much point in using a crescent wrench when it doesn't work as well.

As for voting in the US - I regularly vote third-party, but it's almost always a protest vote... I don't actually think that we'd be better served by most of the third parties. In general, the Democrats and Republicans tend to be the most centrist and practical - even if they are all habitual liars.

Re:Windows Addicts

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If you're trying to give up drinking you don't take an occasional belt from your hip flask, even if everyone else around you is still drunk off their ass.

So you're comparing Windows to an addiction? I think your analogy is flawed. These are tools we're talking about. Here's a different analogy. When working in the garden using a roto-tiller, sometimes it is tempting to use a shovel for certain tasks. This is wrong, because soon you'll find that using a shovel is easier in some cases.

People should use whatever tool is most suited to their needs.

Then they surf the web a bit with Firefox and may or may not notice how much better it runs under Windows. Reluctantly they reboot into Linux and feel the withdrawl symptoms. Soon they're installing VMware or Cedega but it's just not as good as the raw experience.

If their Web browsing and application availability in Linux is inferior, why should they use it? I mean, I use Linux for various server roles, but I'm certainly not going to use it as my default workstation if I have a tool better suited to that task. Depending upon my needs, I pick the right tool. Why should anyone pick an inferior tool for some task? Why does strapping a shovel to the side of your roto-tiller upset you so? It adds functionality. If you find that you end up suing the shovel a lot more often than the roto-tiller, well good for you.

Re:Windows Addicts

[Ash-Fox]

This is being typed in Safari on OS X.

I can't tell if he's trying to annoy MacOSX users or provoke other OS users.

Re:Windows Addicts

[Ash-Fox]

The truth of the matter is there are some programs for which simply no good alternatives available on linux .

That is why we have Wine.

Some people want to play half-life 2 without paying a monthly fee to cedega.

Why don't you just use the latest version of Wine, Cedega doesn't even work most of the time for me. Wine does.

People might also have alot of thier information locked in propietary formats.

Are you saying that there isn't Open-source software that can't read proprietary formats? I mean, it's not like OpenOffice.org can't open quite a few proprietary office suite formats, oh wait, it can.

Re:Windows Addicts

[Cadallin]

The big problem is games. I switched to a Mac cold turkey last year, but dammit I wanted to play Baldur's Gate, and Planescape: Torment. It's a pain in the ass. I love my PowerMac, I love that at 1.5GB of RAM I'm not even close to maxing out the ram either (An annoyed punch at the intel switch, 2GB is not a high enough ram ceiling. Even with the Xeon style hacked 36-bit addressing, you're still limited to 2GB per application, which is going to be VERY limiting in a few years). Games don't run well non-natively. Although my favorites probably could in a Virtual Machine environment where most things can run natively as they are all stictly 2D. You can't just "find an alternative" to a favorite game. It doesn't work like that. This is probably the biggest issue holding people back on Windows. Just like the Penny-Arcade guys, bought themselves each a new Intel Imac, they love the machines, they Like OS X, and think it's dog's bollocks compared to Windows, but they're addicted to games and therefore can't let go. Now if someone could write an incredibly accurate, incredibly efficent DirectX to SDL translation layer.... that might help.

has anyone tried parallels for linux?

[soleblaze]

Has anyone here tried Parallels for linux? Wondering how well it works compared to VMware workstation/vmplayer.

Re:has anyone tried parallels for linux?

[roye]

I have been using it for about 1 month to run Ubuntu for about a month. I have no real problems, the only drawback is that Parallels does not provide a handy script to share a folder between OS X and ubuntu. I am sure that there is an easy way to do this, but I have not investigated because it is not really a drawback for me as the files I am accessing are on a webDAV remote share. Boot up is snappy, you can map the Virtual cd-rom to an .iso, so install is speedy. This is on a MacBook (trusy white) 2Ghz with 1G RAM. YMMV

Re:has anyone tried parallels for linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had some serious issues with the modules on Ubuntu 6, but VMWare doesn't support 2.6.16+ either.

I just went back to gentoo with 2.6.15 until patches have been released.

Two things missing:

[bloggin joe]

As someone else said elsewhere, there's two things missing:

1. Hardware accellerated graphics - doesn't need to be perfect or native-speed, but anything is better than software (I hate the current redraws when resizing windows)
2. Direct HD partition support so we can boot off the same 'system' and have the same applications and data, with the only thing needed being a seperate Hardware profile in Windows - would make things a lot easier to use and convenient (Boot directly into windows for games, boot in Parallels for work, as needed)

Plus I would add a third: bring the price back down to $49.99 as it was originally.

Re:Two things missing:

[Sithgunner]

but forget the price if they fix those issues.

Re:Two things missing:

[Chris_Jefferson]

While I would like (2), it just is not going to work with Windows XP, as it will keep complaining you need to re-register whenever you boot into the other version, and all the hardware changes. The only fix would have to come from Microsoft (hahahaha).

Even if you tried doing it with windows 2000/98/95, it would have to somehow cope with the hardware changing on every boot, which is something windows just doesn't cope well with.

Re:Two things missing:

[Dragonfly]

2. Direct HD partition support so we can boot off the same 'system' and have the same applications and data

It's coming in a future release.

Lots of more info at the official Parallels blog.

Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini?

Why is this even a real question? The Mac Mini is nothing but an Intel Yonah (Core Solo / Duo) CPU system with an Intel 945 Express chipset (and integrated Intel GMA950 GPU), and EFI instead of a BIOS. Hardware wise, it's an exceptionally common Intel system.

Re: Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini?

[topham]

Because, if you do research you will find that not all the MacMini's support the virtualization required.

Seems intel had a run of chips that didn't support it and Apple didn't care either way, it wasn't a selling point of the machine at the time.

Re: Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini?

[weston]

I've heard that a number of the Minis -- I'm not sure which -- have chips which don't have the virtualization support, or have it crippled by firmware troubles. There's some info in the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_mini

The real question: why does the person who submitted the story think the Mini question is answered in the review? The word "mini" doesn't even appear in the blog post anywhere.

Re: Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini?

[Fermata]

There are still some sporadic reports at forum.parallels.com that people are still having difficulty getting Parallels to recognize and use the VT-x instructions on their Minis, but the problems seemed to have largely been resolved by the latest Apple firmware updates.

Even if you did have a chip that is somehow lacking the VT-x instructions, you could still run Parallels just fine - albeit not at its full potential speed. This has been true since the first beta of Parallels and is true of virtualization products on other platforms. The OP probably didn't think to mention it because it is a non-issue.

Re: Does it run succesfully on a Mac Mini?

[JustSayNo2Jesus]

Not sure about Mini's with Core Solo chips but for Mini's with Core Duo chips, if you run Parallels and the About box says VT-X is in software mode X, put the Mini to sleep and then wake it up and check again. VT-X support should miraculously be enabled. I just tried it now while posting and it does exactly what I just said on the newest beta. It's a bug with the firmware and my Mini has the latest firmware update from Apple. Got this fix from the Parallels forums awhile ago.

Apple agrees!

[sootman]

Here's the interesting thing: Apple talks about Parallels, not Boot Camp, on their "OMG It runs teh windoze!!!111oneone" page:

Talk about a win-win situation. Now you can take advantage of all the benefits of owning a Mac but still enjoy the convenience of starting up your Mac in Windows XP and running a Windows-only game or productivity application when needed. Third-party software solutions such as Parallels Desktop for Mac help make it possible.

(From http://www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html)

The funny thing is, they mention "starting up your Mac in Windows XP"--sounds like some of the copy writers need a crash-course in the difference between multibooting and virtualization.

Re:Apple agrees!

[mr_matticus]

Actually, the "start your Mac up in Windows XP" is a direct reference to Boot Camp. The last sentence really belongs in the following paragraph and I'd have worded it differently, but there it is.

Beyond that, there's a certain quiet genius in the ad. They're pushing Parallels because it helps the publisher make money, but it also achieves an OS X marketing advantage. Not only does it cost more to buy Windows+Parallels, but it doesn't run exceptionally well--OS X will always be faster. Both of these reduce the use of Windows on Macs without resorting to active malice. It fits in with the strategy of allowing but not encouraging Windows use.

Why must we choose...

[thefirelane]

I want this software too boot up from the windows partition. That way I can have convenience when I want it, and reboot to play games if I must. I wrote Parallels about this, and they said it should be on their feature list.... but it should be priority #1

Re:Why must we choose...

[Stalyn]

VMware has a setup called "raw disk" which is basically what you requested. It really is the best of both worlds, I can use Windows office apps from Linux when I need to without rebooting. But when I want to play some games I can just boot to the same partition. I agree there should be more focus on this type of setup for Desktop users.

Rootkit potential?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to post the same link. Anyone have a clue if this is a legitimate concern?

Why choose?

[Anonymous Freak]

They are meant for different markets.

Parallels is for people who need to run OS X and Windows at the same time.

Boot Camp is for people who need to occassionally run Windows separately from Mac OS X. For example: games, secure environments, people who just want to use Apple hardware with Windows, and have nothing to do with OS X whatsoever.

Neither product claims to support gaming

[multimediavt]

Ok, for everyone that thinks, i.e., assumes and doesn't know, that Boot Camp from Apple or Parallel's Desktop for Macintosh were created for gamers, you're dead wrong!

Neither product claims to be able to play games, nor offers much in the way of support for gaming. Although, Boot Camp and running Windows XP natively on the hardware will certainly give you a better chance of doing so.

These applications are for people (like me) who work in an office that is Windows abundant so they can run stupid, lousy, poorly written pieces of software like Outlook and can get on the Exchange server to do what they're already doing BETTER with an open source product running someplace else. It's also for those of us that need access to applications like AutoCAD from time-to-time or some other application that only runs under Windows.

Yes, for some, the desire to play Windows-based games is driving them to these products, but they're no where near ready for that crowd. Parallels Desktop is RC2 and even though it has a version number of 2.1, it's really the first revision for the Intel-based Macs. Boot Camp, well, it's clearly labeled on the web page as "Public BETA", i.e., use at your own peril.

Please stop bashing a product simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do even though it wasn't designed (or intended) to do that task. Parallels is a very capable virtual machine application and is very easy to setup and use. As someone who has used a dual-boot system as his primary machine, I can tell you (IMHO) the Parallels product kicks dual booting in the ass! Dual boot is fine if you're only going to use the one partition for gaming. If you're talking about a work environment where you need to switch back and forth fairly regularly, dual-booting sucks! Again, IMHO.

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[ZackSchil]

Actually, Boot Camp is geared towards gamers. Apple worked with ATI to release a 3D accelerated Windows driver for the ATI cards included with Macs. The standard Windows drivers would have been enough to use office apps, etc and 3D hardware acceleration would not have been needed had they not intended the driver package to be used by gamers.

It would be silly to think Apple didn't see "Run Windows games on a Mac" for the runaway money train it truly is.

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[Cyrano4747]

I'm really getting tired of reading all these comments to the effect that "Bootcamp sucks, it won't run games, it isn't designed for a gamer crowd, etc."

I have no idea if it was built for gamers or not. All I know is that I own a Macbook Pro, have bootcamp installed on it, and find that it works absolutly fine for gaming.

Does it run every last game at tip-top resolutions and graphics levels? No, it's a laptop with an X1600 mobile card in it. It runs newer games (Oblivion is a prime example) WELL, even with all of the default drivers and such that Apple gives you with the bootcamp disk, but it isn't a desktop uber-rig, and never will be.

The ONLY real difference that I've noticed with XP on my mac is that some of the mac-specific hardware (the built in camera, for example) dosn't respond the way it should, and the Windows clock is wonky as all hell (it never holds a time if it's not connected to the net - I think this has something to do with the lack of a true BIOS, since I've had friends with older Macs that did the same thing when a battery on their motherboard died on them).

Can you tweek it to get even better performance (new drivers, software overclocking software, remapping keys to better emulate a "windows standard" keyboard, etc.)? Yes, and I believe that the majority of gamers who would bother installing bootcamp to play games are fully capable of such relativly minor optimizations. Even so, even assuming the person booting into windows is the most casual of casual gamers and utterly incapable of even installing a driver, the experiance you get using windows on a Macbook isn't radically different from what you would get on any other machine with equivilant hardware.

I really don't see why people can't just take the Bootcamp software for what it is. Between the Mac forum zealots claiming that it will destroy your computer for the sole reason that Windows is an abomination in the eyes of the Holy Prophet Jobs and the Windows nutjobs claiming that it will never be a "true gaming rig" (I suspect that these same people don't consdier it a true gaming rig unless it has the newest gear as of last weekend) I really sometimes wonder why have to wonder. . .

Ah well, you can all go on complaining about it and talking about how much it sucks, and I'll keep on playing Oblivion while on my lunchbreak at work.

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[Synic]

Just curious what settings you need to use in Oblivion in Windows XP on Parallels in order for it to run "WELL" (your word).

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[Vlastyn]

Did you even read the post you've responded to? Parallels isn't even mentioned once. FWIW, I doubt there's a way of getting Oblivion to work well with Paralells, however in my experience it worked fine with Boot Camp- however, on the iMac I had to run it in a lower than native resolution to get it to run at a decent speed with the visuals turned up.

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[richmaine]

mod -1, failure to read parent article.

The parent in question is explicitly talking about boot camp, not Parallels, running Oblivion well.

This agrees well with other reports and with common sense. An x1600, even underclocked, ought to be able to run Oblivion well. While it might not be the uber screaming chip for the macho teenagers using their computers as a measure of penis size, it is pretty decent. For example, it is better than any of the graphics chips I happen to have in any of my Windows boxes (one of which runs Oblivion pretty well, and the other of which is more like ok).

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[yarbo]

So a beta program (boot camp) that can screw up your system is good for work stuff? Where a system going down can cost you lots of productivity? I'd imagine it's more common and makes more sense to use it to play games.

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[multimediavt]

So a beta program (boot camp) that can screw up your system is good for work stuff? Where a system going down can cost you lots of productivity? I'd imagine it's more common and makes more sense to use it to play games.

Ummm...No, I believe I said that a virtual machine is better for "work stuff"...other than that isn't the rest what I pretty much said (other than the nonsense whining about it screwing up your computer)? BTW, it's BETA SOFTWARE!!!!!! As a perennial product BETA tester for various and sundry software houses for more than a decade I can tell you without an instant of pause:

YOU'RE A F**KING MORON IF YOU RUN BETA SOFTWARE ON A PRIMARY/PRODUCTION MACHINE!!!!

If you took the time to read the docs that shipped with Boot Camp Public Beta, you will find words to that effect in them, and every other piece of BETA software from any vendor. It's called legally covering your ass against morons that load BETA software on their primary machines and complain when it gets hosed.

Re:Neither product claims to support gaming

[Cyrano4747]

Mmmmm.... well, if you'll look at my post above you'll see I'm using Bootcamp, not parallels. I seriously doubt it would run at all in parallels, due to the fact that it has no meaningful (at least from a gamer's standpoint) hardware support.

As to what settings I use in Bootcamp, I've got it at 1280x768 resolution, Large texture size, all of the actor fade settings right in the middle, outside view distance maxed, HDR on, and all of the little effects (water detail, reflections on water and glass, etc) turned to either on (for the on/off ones) or high (for stuff like blood decals, water detail, etc, with multiple settings).

The only real sacrifice I make is in toning down the self-shadows (because I think they looks stupid, not for performance reasons) and taking the shadows from trees and the shadows on grass down to about 1/4 the way up the slider.

I get good, strong performance. I get the occasional chug, but that is usually related to something else, like me being an idiot and playing until 4 AM. It's time to go to bed when then AV scanner starts eating up your performance.

Have I seen better? Heck yes, usually from my friends' massive gaming towers. Do I get an enjoyable experiance from a VERY portable laptop that is running an OS that it was never designed for? Oh yeah.

Misleading story

[solistus]

TFA says NOTHING about Parallels being better than Boot Camp; the only reason he cites for wanting to use Parallels instead is to save room on the main disk. Since Parallels fails entirely on his external drive, it doesn't even accomplish that modest goal.

Aside from some fairly vague comments about the VMs being "fairly snappy," there's no indication of performance. From what I've heard, Parallels doesn't even come close to Boot Camp on that front, probably because Apple ported its own drivers specifically for Boot Camp so that all the hardware would work at full speed.

Also, Parallels costs $49.99. Boot Camp is free.

Oh, and the author says that setting up the VMs is time-consuming and complex; Boot Camp, by most reports, is easier to set up than installing Windows on a 'regular' PC.

The only advantage Parallels has over Boot Camp is that it can be used for more than just Windows. However, that's not a reason to prefer it if what you want is Windows. Boot Camp is free, faster and easier to set up. There may be some other advantages to Parallels, but this (decidedly mediocre) article doesn't mention any of them.

Re:Misleading story

[chris234]

The main advantage to Parallels for me (I've been trying it since it initial release, btw) is the simple fact that I don't have to reboot to run Windows. Bootcamp doesn't cut it, if I need to exit my computing environment just to work on a Visio document or some other Windows app. I don't want to lose access to the rest of my online world in those cases.

Re:Misleading story

[FredFnord]

From what I've heard, Parallels doesn't even come close to Boot Camp on that front, probably because Apple ported its own drivers specifically for Boot Camp so that all the hardware would work at full speed.

From what I've heard, Parallels runs between 4% slower and 1% faster than XP on a MacBook Pro. The only problem area is graphics. Perhaps you mean 'doesn't even come close to Boot Camp for games? Believe it or not, that's not its target market.

-fred

Re:Misleading story

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. I have 3 installs of windows and 3 distros of linux on my external with parallels

Re:Misleading story

[solistus]

GPU performance is important for a lot more than games, and will continue to become even more vital in the future. Heard of Vista Premium? A lot of people also want to be able to run graphics-intensive CAD, Photoshop, etc. style apps. I never said every component ran slower, but buying a machine with a decent graphics card and then using Parallels to lose that performance benefit might make sense to some users who value not having to reboot over having the full power of their machine, but there are plenty of people who'd rather not deal with that limitation, especially on a piece of software that isn't free.

Re:Misleading story

[solistus]

That is a very nice feature, and probably one of the main ones that causes people to run Parallels over Boot Camp. However, TFA didn't discuss this. I was just pointing out that the article does not make any arguments as to why Parallels > Boot Camp, and, from what the article says, there is no apparent reason to prefer Parallels.

Re:Misleading story

[solistus]

Yeah, I figured such things were possible. I guess this just further highlights the usability gap between Parallels and Boot Camp - the author of this article, who cared enough to write about the software and who joosan identified as a sysadmin, couldn't get this feature to work and had his VMs farked over without doing anything obviously incorrectly, at least from what he wrote in TFA.

Re:Misleading story

[Ash-Fox]

A lot of people also want to be able to run graphics-intensive CAD, Photoshop, etc. style apps.

Heh, run Windows in a window to run the Windows version of Photoshop...

Saving lives?

[Anonymous Coward]

5 minutes in savings
12 of those in an hour
288 in a day
about 300,000 in 3 years
about 3 million in 30 years

You have to save in the neighborhood of 5-10 million people five minutes each to save one lifetime's worth of time.

you < Superman

Re:Saving lives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any time the GP saved me has been lost by reading this post. Cosmic balance is restored...

Re:Saving lives?

[Selecter]

him > you, coward.

What?

[bogie]

Something is wrong with your PC then. I'm idling at 2% and part of that is task manager. If its at 11% then you just happen to be looking at your system while its updating something or XP is running backgroud tasks. The same thing happens on linux.

If through this app XP takes up 20% cpu just sitting there then the app is buggy.

Runs fine on my Intel Mac mini

[kherr]

I've got Parallels running WinXP just fine on my Mac mini, and it's pretty nice. I'm forced to run certain things (robot programming) under Windows. Now that I have a good environment to play with I can play with linux distros and find better robot tools.

I didn't even know about the virtualization problem, I just got the warning from Parallels but it ran fine. Now I have to look into some fixes and speed that sucker up. Or maybe I can upgrade to a Core 2 Duo.

easier, slower

[m874t232]

Using Parallels is an easy way of installing Linux or Windows. In terms of raw CPU, it works efficiently, with little overhead. However, OSX has a hell of a time with paging and big processes, so get a lot of memory and still be prepared to watch the spinning cursor for a while while switching to/from Parallels.

Re:easier, slower

[Xyde]

I don't know if that's true, virtual pc manages not beachballing just not fine and it's just as big of an app as paralells is.

it goes the other way, probably more often

[r00t]

The Windows setup gets slow for some unknown reason. It gains unwanted features like Sony DRM and the CoolWebSearch toolbar. Pretty soon the Windows partition is just a big waste of space.

For me, it was when my NT4 setup got hacked over the local network. Probably the C$ administrative share had something to do with it. (WTF was that for anyway? I never asked for that. I disabled it many times, but Windows would helpfully restore the damn thing.) Fortunately I had NT4 on D:, making the c:autoexec.bat vandalism harmless. After that though, I would always physically disconnect the network cable before booting Windows. Pretty soon I took to leaving Mozilla running for weeks in Linux.

Re:it goes the other way, probably more often

[drsmithy]

Probably the C$ administrative share had something to do with it. (WTF was that for anyway? I never asked for that. I disabled it many times, but Windows would helpfully restore the damn thing.)

History.

You probably got pwned by a weak Administrator password.

Re:it goes the other way, probably more often

[r00t]

I don't recall what I had for an Administrator password, but this was around 1997. Cracking NT passwords was harder than it is today.

Since I never asked to serve my filesystem, I certainly shouldn't need a password at all. I never chose to be a server. I didn't enable anything.

The link you provided is quite disturbing. I feel like I must be reading it wrongly. That just can't be real. A plain old NT4 install would share all drives to the world without passwords? Oh my God. This wasn't headline news? About the only equal security hole I've ever heard of was the old sendmail debug command. Wow. Did I read that right? WTF?

Re:it goes the other way, probably more often

[drsmithy]

The link you provided is quite disturbing. I feel like I must be reading it wrongly. That just can't be real. A plain old NT4 install would share all drives to the world without passwords?

You're reading it wrong. It will share it to Administrator level users (ie: you need an Administrator user/pass), for administrative purposes.

Re:it goes the other way, probably more often

[r00t]

"to Administrator level users"

OK, that should only be me. This was a dorm network, back when everyone else was running Windows 95. I certainly wasn't in any sort of realm or NT domain.

Having not installed anything like telnet/rsh/ftp services, I shouldn't need a password.

I guess that's not the way it is, because of the stupid admin shares and the well-known SID for the Administrator? (in other words, what I said: shared to the world w/o a password, because having a password sure wasn't enforced nor was any critical need explained)

I probably had a 2-letter password intended only to discourage a roommate who could just boot from floppy if he really wanted to get access.

Re:it goes the other way, probably more often

[drsmithy]

OK, that should only be me. This was a dorm network, back when everyone else was running Windows 95. I certainly wasn't in any sort of realm or NT domain.

Computers aren't psychic. They have no way of knowing whether "you" really is "you" or someone pretending to be "you". All they can determine is whether or not some attempt to access resources has the right credentials.

Having not installed anything like telnet/rsh/ftp services, I shouldn't need a password.

Default configuration included file sharing. This is, I might point out, not markedly different from the default configuration of just about every similar OS from that era, many of which (particularly on the unix side) enabled far more "dangerous" remote services than filesharing.

You were using a particular piece of software outside of the default environment it was assumed it would be in. The onus was on *you* to reconfigure it appropriately. Again the computer (nor its developer) isn't psychic. It doesn't know what type of environment it's in.

This "security hole" is an order of magnitude less "serious" than allowing remote shell logins as root - something a non-trivial number of unixes do, even today. Don't try to blow it out of proportion just because you happened to get "cracked" due to operator error.

Re:it goes the other way, probably more often

[r00t]

Anybody using a UNIX system back then would know that it comes configured with rsh, telnet, rlogin, ftp, etc. You need a password. (note: the filesystem root is NOT exported by default)

Windows is a desktop and gaming OS. It doesn't normally provide UNIX-style services. I can't telnet in. Of course I don't expect to need a password.

Re:it goes the other way, probably more often

[drsmithy]

Anybody using a UNIX system back then would know that it comes configured with rsh, telnet, rlogin, ftp, etc.

As would anyone using Windows NT4 and Windows 2000.

You need a password.

As you did with Windows NT4 and Windows 2000.

(note: the filesystem root is NOT exported by default)

You could typically *telnet as root* into unix machines that old by default. More recent ones you can typically "only" SSH in as root.

Now, which do you consider to be more exposure - the ability get a root shell or the ability to access a drive ?

Windows is a desktop and gaming OS.

Windows NT4 and 2000 were neither (although they could be used as such). They were business desktops targeted at managed environments. They were *never* targeted at home users and especially not for gaming.

It doesn't normally provide UNIX-style services.

No, it doesn't. However, Windows - even "home-user" Windows 3.x - had been providing filesharing out of the box since ca. 1993. You are talking about ca. 1997. It was a standard feature. Much like telnet, ftp, etc were on unix boxes.

I can't telnet in. Of course I don't expect to need a password.

You had to manually log in to Windows NT4. Windows 2000 did introduce an auto-login feature, but both required the setting of a password during installation. Windows NT4 was a multiuser, business OS designed to both use and provide network services. How could you *not* expect to "need a password" !?

Parallels

[falconwolf]

Plus I would add a third: bring the price back down to $49.99 as it was originally.

From their website, it still is $49.99:
* Limited time offer! Buy through 15th of July only for $49.99 and get $30 OFF!

That, I'm glad to read. I don't have a MacTel yet but am hoping to get a Macbook Pro within a week or two. That'll give me at least a couple of weeks for testing before buying it.

Falcon Falcon

AutoCAD

[falconwolf]

It's also for those of us that need access to applications like AutoCAD from time-to-time or some other application that only runs under Windows.

I didn't see that Autodesk had AutoCAD for Macs, it does have AutoCAD LT ported to Macs though. Also there are other CAD packages for Macs, Architosh is a community of Mac based architects and other CAD users. There may be a specific requirement to use AutoCAD but there are CAD programs for Macs if there isn't a requirement. Otherwise I agree with your post.

Falcon

Re:AutoCAD

[multimediavt]

I'm really not trying to be rude, but I have an architecture degree and know what CAD packages are available for both platforms. AutoDesk made AutoCAD for the Mac up until Release 12, when they decided to ditch the Mac platform. They have been reconsidering that stance with the latest development efforts for the next revision of AutoCAD.

Personally, I think AutoCAD sucks! I much prefer Microstation as a CAD package, but honestly have little use for one, period. However, there are times when I do review drawings for building projects on the Virginia Tech campus, and occasionally have to use AutoCAD. As a faculty member in the College of Engineering, I get AutoCAD for free (or close to it anyway). I can tell you that AutoCAD files from firms will often require AutoCAD (and certain add-ons) to be viewed. Architosh can read in simple AutoCAD and DXF files, but the more complex files it doesn't work so well on.

Yes, do get another gig of RAM!

[LKM]

I do plan to upgrade to 2GB of RAM on the MacBook Pro, though.

Do yourself a favor. Run, don't walk, to the nearest computer hardware store and get the additional gig of RAM. It's a world of a difference.

My MacBook Pro felt slow with only one gig. Worse, when running lots of applications, or single applications which didn't behave too well, it would slow to a crawl, sometimes not accepting mouse clicks for seconds. With the second gigabyte, it's fast, snappy, responsive.

Don't run a MacBook Pro with only one gig, especially if you want to run stuff like Parallels.

Re:Yes, do get another gig of RAM!

[CerebusUS]

I'll second this. 2GB of RAM in a MacBook Pro is ideal.

and for the great grand-parent, you should find that parallels running on a MBP will outperform the Pentium M you have in the Dell, provided you aren't simultaneously soaking the processor in OS X :-)

Windows Activation

[LKM]

Coming from the Mac, I have a question about this: Doesn't this clash with Windows' Activation? If you boot the same installation from within Parallels and from the Mac itself, wouldn't Windows see that as two different computers, which would trigger a new activation?

Re:Windows Activation

[dafz1]

I don't think so, depending on:

1. Parallels, in the future, includes some kind of FAT32 disk format/resizing(like Boot Camp does) capability. The reason it needs FAT32 is OS X can read/write to a FAT32 partiton, but not a NTFS partition(which will be a problem with Vista). This would make a much easier transition, since it already knows how to write to a virtual Windows disk.

2. You haven't already installed the copy of Windows XP on the virtual disk. If you've done that, I'm sure it would be treated as if you have installed it on two machines.

Parallels v.s. Boot Camp

[JohnDProctor]

A rather superficial review. As a long time user of VPC on my G4 PB(s) and now using a MacBook Pro 15" (2 GB Ram) I can honestly say Parallels is good for a first off product. While it supports DirectX 2D it does not support DirectX 3D (no I'm not a gamer!) I have a Windows marine navigation application which uses DirectX 3D and it does not run on Parallels. I suspect that support will be forthcoming but it probably will target DirectX Version 10 (Vista). I've been able to access USB peripherals (LaCie DL DVD writer, Keyspan USB to Serial addapter). Fidelity is good, stability is good, performance is excellent and this is with the released product for which I have a permanent key. I also have Boot Camp installed and it works well and does support fully DirectX 3D. My navigation application works well under boot camp. The only hassle is the separate disk partition and the reboot. Windows XP runs well in this environment and wireless networking came up without a hitch! The peripherals which don't have Apple supported drivers yet (USB camera, ambient light sensor etc.) are really not a problem for me. So for full fidelity Boot Camp is the go. For everything else Parallels wins hands down!

Re:Parallels v.s. Boot Camp

[argent]

I'm more interested in seeing whether it'll support OpenGL 3d. Given Apple's strong support for OpenGL, running apps that do support both APIs in OpenGL mode is likely to be the best option if it's available.

Re:Parallels v.s. Boot Camp

[JohnDProctor]

If I had a choice between two essentially identical applications and one used OpenGL and one used DirectX then yes I'd prefer the OpenGL solution. However it is not a level playing field and developers have made decisions wrt the market they are selling into. In this case I have a Marine Navigation application which requires DirectX and for which I am involved with a company which sells the product. So in the verbiage of golf "I gotta play the ball where it lies".

Running Windows XP from a USB/Firewire Drive

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that Windows XP can not be run from an external drive, be it USB or FireWire?

Any thoughts about that?

Re:Running Windows XP from a USB/Firewire Drive

[Dragonfly]

I was under the impression that Windows XP can not be run from an external drive, be it USB or FireWire?

Any thoughts about that?

XP may, but Parallels can't use a VM file stored on an external USB drive according to the article. Other posters have indicated that running a VM stored on a FireWire drive does work.

Parallels is a godsend

[raddan]

I've been using Parallels Workstation for the Mac (or whatever they call it now) for a couple of months now. I admin a respectably-sized Active Directory and radmind'ed Mac network. We also have a dozen or so OpenBSD servers in our closet, so having a machine that can work with Windows, Macs, and has all of my fun UNIX tools is great. For years I've had two or three boxes connected via a KVM, but this is superior. I have a dual-display set up with my Intel iMac, with Parallels (WinXP) in one display, and the MacOS in the other. I can share files between the two, and I don't need to fiddle with a KVM switch, which never really seems to handle USB device removal/insertion very well.

This is the ultimate test of Parallels in my mind: I am running the Exchange 5.5 Administrator tool on my Mac (we have a legacy 5.5 install that we're migration away from). Do any of you realize what a perversion this is? It runs great!

Oh, and the Parallels team is super-responsive to bug reports. I am quite happy with this product.

You can Pause the VM to reduce CPU usage.

[Dragonfly]

Pausing my XP Pro VM drops Parallel's usage from ~15% (idle) to ~7% on my 2Ghz iMac.

depends

[anti-drew]

What's odd about Parallels's performance:

Computationally, it's pretty close to what you'd expect. It only emulates a single processor machine right now, so if you benchmark it on a Core Duo 2GHz, it comes in somewhere between a 1.6 and 2.0 GHz single-core Pentium. Just about right. Integer is noticeably faster than FP, perhaps because FP context switches require a bigger virtualization hit. Compiling a big project with MSVC is about 10% slower on Parallels than on my previous 1.6GHz notebook, which is very reasonable to me given the overhead of virtualization.

However, I've noticed that typing can be laggy. There's a small delay (on the order of a few extra milliseconds) before you hit a key and it gets displayed. It's not as bad as it sounds -- I personally get used to it pretty quickly. But YMMV. It's noticeable, but not quite in the realm of annoying. Perhaps they'll figure out a way to improve that. If you pushed me for a diagnosis of what's wrong, maybe they haven't figured out how to turn off Quartz's double-buffering when they're in fullscreen mode. That'd be a relatively easy fix for 1.1.

So ... the short answer is that it's not -quite- as snappy as your previous laptop in Parallels 1.0. It's definitely close enough to do something like compile code in MSVC, which is 90% of what I do. But speaking as a longtime Mac programmer I think there are still a lot of ways to optimize their app that aren't obvious to them (as mostly non-Mac-programmers), so there's still a lot of room for improvement.

btw, I have 2GB of RAM and gave Parallels 900MB of that. If you can easily afford to go up to 2GB, I'd strongly recommend it so that you can give Windows the amount of RAM you're used to. Virtualization isn't cheap.

Parallels isn't in the same sport as Boot Camp.

[argent]

Boy, you really missed the big one.

Not only is Parallels not in the same league as boot camp, it's not even playing the same game!

The only advantage Parallels has over Boot Camp is that it can be used for more than just Windows.

If you want to boot any other OS on your Mac you don't need a hack like "Boot Camp". The only reason you need Boot Camp at all is because Windows doesn't support EFI natively. If you want to run UNIX on your Mac you have your choice of a variety of free UNIXes or Apple's native operating system, OS X.

Parallels is a completely different product than Boot Camp. You don't shut down Mac OS X to run Windows under Parallels, or hibernate it, or sleep it, Parallels isn't a boot manager, it's a virtual environment that runs Windows under Mac OS X. You double-click on the loopy infinity icon, and a little while later you've got the Windows desktop (or FreeBSD, or Linux, or whatever you want) in a window under Mac OS X. You can use both at the same time, run your Windows applications at full speed alongside your Mac apps. The only problem I've found so far is that they don't provide OpenGL or DirectX 3d access ... their emulated framebuffer is 2d only.

Re:Parallels isn't in the same sport as Boot Camp.

[Ash-Fox]

If you want to boot any other OS on your Mac you don't need a hack like "Boot Camp". The only reason you need Boot Camp at all is because Windows doesn't support EFI natively.

Many Dells which use EFIs have been running Windows XP just fine. I think Apple's EFI firmware is to blame. Intel's EFI can boot Windows XP just fine. The reason why other EFIs have no problem booting Windows is because they have a 'legacy bios' support mode, which by the way is a open specification.

What do you think "virtual machine" means?

[argent]

I was just pointing out that the article does not make any arguments as to why Parallels > Boot Camp

Parallels Desktop for Mac worked quite well. The XP VM was pretty snappy, especially after installing the Parallels tools, which made the mouse cursor seamless with the Mac desktop. Performance was very good; the XP VM ran comparable to a regular mid-range PC. Occasionally the overall system would slow down for a few moments, or the beach ball would appear. Since I had iTunes and Firefox running on the host OS, and had burned some discs at the same time, it felt like acceptable occasional lag given what else I had the machine doing.

"The XP VM [virtual machine] was snappy [...] I had iTunes and Firefox running on the host OS, and had burned some discs at the same time".

He was running Windows and Mac applications concurrently. Boot Camp doesn't do this, it's not a virtual machine environment. Sheesh.

coral link

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not kill this guy's server...
http://jeremyrandall.org.nyud.net:8090/blog/88

thank god / buddha / muhammed for Parallels

[Pliep]

Parallels lets me run any Windows version + apps inside a window on my OS X desktop.

Being a web designer, I can now do all my work on Mac OS X and switch back and forth to Windows + Internet Explorer in seconds (to check how barfingly ugly my work will look to MSIE visitors). Well worth it's money, even though gaming is not supported.

Boot Camp is just total nonsense in my situation. I'm just NOT willing to reboot for anything.

Lastly, Parallels with Windows XP Home Edition with no running apps takes up 6-7% CPU on my 1,66 GHz Core Duo Mac mini.

Taking lives?

[Kadin2048]

So if you waste 5 minutes each from 5 or 10 million people, can we just say you're guilty of murder and execute you?

Because if so, there are a whole lot of people on American Idol that I want to make sure are first up against the wall. Then we'll start on spammers and the guy who wrote the Llama Song.

Two huge questions

[Foo2rama]

Could we have had benchmarks under bootcamp and then under parallels? I really think alot of users would like to know how much of a hit we take just to get this. Also can we bootcamp and parallel on the same machine? If so are they the same boot, or are they two separate windows installs?

I much prefer Microstation as a CAD package

[falconwolf]

I'd heard Microstation was real good. What do you think of Catia? Years ago I knew a machinist who wanted to setup a shop to custom make metal products and Catia was the only CADD he would use, he'd say it could do things others couldn't.

Falcon

Re:I much prefer Microstation as a CAD package

[multimediavt]

Catia is really an engineering CAD package, along the lines of Unigraphics. It's targeted primarily at industrial/mechanical applications and not architectural or more general design applications. Catia's interface, when I last played with it, was extraordinarily user-unfriendly and counter intuitive. I can only hope that subsequent versions over the last few years have addressed usability issues that long plagued that application and drove people to alternative CAD packages if they were not tied to Catia for job/market specific reasons. It certainly has its niche and is used in a lot of machine shops.

Don't get me wrong, AutoCAD is a piece of crap from a usability standpoint as well! It's gotten a lot better in the last five or six years, but a lot of useful things are still buried or hidden. There are very few robust CAD packages that are even remotely user friendly. In my experience, I prefer(ed) Microstation because it was easy to customize the interface and you could pull just about any menu/submenu out as a window, with tabs in some cases. The windows were like the tool and function windows in Adobe's design apps. It was also an application that really required a dual monitor setup to use effectively, and that really made the Mac platform superior at the time I was using it. I could have the main window and menus on one monitor and all my tool windows on the second one. Windows didn't easily (or at all) support multiple monitors with a continuous desktop until, what?, 1997, or was it Windows 98 that really got that nearly right? Anyway, it was long after I graduated with my architecture degree and had any use for a CAD package.

Another perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Every review, blog, or forum post i've read on the subjects of bootcamp and parallels seems to be from the sole perspective of a die hard osx/mac user who have probably never had a real virtualization environment comparable to those on x86. This is starting to annoy me a bit. From the perspective of someone who's only now switched to a mac (for the simple fact that I want my equipment that I paid good money for to be capable of running all software solutions available (I like to be prepared)), I can safely say Parallels is not really an ideal solution, yet. Parallels is _ok_ for a simple vm, but I'd be much happier with it if it were able to boot from existing partitions. Because it doesn't have support for 3d acceleration, I'm somewhat forced to use bootcamp. Fair enough, 3d acceleration probably isn't a trivial matter to overcome for virtualization. Never the less, sometimes I require XP + 3d accel for work (XSI, Maya. Added performance of booting xp natively also helps here), and sometimes I require osx (shake, xgrid). And now parallels wants me to create /yet another/ xp install, along with any apps I want to use? Not to mention /yet another/ Linux install if I want to work on my dev projects without rebooting, maintaining multiple or offsite copies of source code. Just seems pointless. As others have pointed out, usb connectivity falls behind what xp users expect with vmware aswell. With these in mind, I honestly can't see why anyone would /pay/ for parallels when Q (carbon version of qemu), darwine, and bochs are all (more) mature /free/ options that perform just as well (and with obscure oses, even better). Perhaps they just don't know that parallels is nothing special, and they're wasting money on something thats already given away for free?

To anyone who actually KNOWS....

[amichalo]

If anyone actually knows and is not just speculating, what are the issues/warnings/pitfalls with using Parallels to run a .NET development environment?

Does Parallels run and entire Windows OS in the window (with start button, etc) or does it just run the App?

I love my Mac at home and would like to work from home but I have to use IIS, Visual Studio, and SQL Server to do that. I know Boot Camp can handle the task, but I'd really love to do my coding and have my iTunes, Mail, iChat, etc all running in OS X too.

dual monitior

[falconwolf]

I could have the main window and menus on one monitor and all my tool windows on the second one. Windows didn't easily (or at all) support multiple monitors with a continuous desktop until, what?, 1997, or was it Windows 98 that really got that nearly right?

Windows 95 could do dual monitors but not well. Windows 98 was much better at it. Since '98 I haven't used or setup dual monitors so I don't know how newer versions of Windows behaves with them. However I'm hoping to get a Macbook Pro by the end of the month and will set it up to do dual monitors.

Falcon