Parallels Desktop for OS X Reviewed

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has put up a great review of the first full release of Parallels' virtualization software for OS X, Parallels Desktop 1.0. From the article: 'Move over emulation, virtualization is in and it's hotter than two Jessica Albas wresting the devil himself in a pit of molten steel. It's no contest, virtualization has it all: multiple operating systems running on the same machine at nearly the full speed of the host's processor with each system seamlessly networking with the next. Add to that the fact that it's cheaper than getting a new machine and you have the guaranteed latest craze. Not even the Hula Hoop can stop this one.'"

Comments

Yes, but will it run...

[ZachPruckowski]

Vista?

I mean, it doesn't do a video card, and apparently even the lowest Vista settings need a video card (at least 64MB VRAM, right?). OR do I misunderstand things?

Re:Yes, but will it run...

[b0s0z0ku]

But the low-end sticker "Vista Capable" requires a DX9 card with 32 MB of VRAM, according to wikipedia. And that's the ultimate low-end.

Will Vista run on computers with less, just lose some features, so M$ might not want manufs putting the "capable" sticker on lesser hardware so that Vista won't look crummy? I mean, XP is technically capable of running in 640x480 16-color mode...

32 MB of VRAM just to display/edit Word documents, basic web pages, and Excel tables seems like using Tsar Bomba to kill the mosquito that's keeping you awake at night. And those 3 tasks are what 99% of all business users need, and not much more.

-b.

Great.

[Above]

So Intel can finally do what IBM developed back in the 1960's. LPAR anyone?

Shared RAM?

[xjerky]

One thing that bugs me is tht you have to carve out a dedicated amount of RAM to each guest OS, even if you aren't using all of it. Since I don't intend to do much with XP I've been able to get by by dedicating only 128MB out of the 1GB on my Mac Mini. I wish there was a way for both OSes to see my 1GB of RAM and use only what's needed, but I guess the OS would need Xen-like additions, no?

Re:I have parallels running

[Dis*abstraction]

I hope you paid for that copy, you filching freeloader.

There will soon be more virtual PCs than PCs

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

As I've said many times before, virtualization is becoming more and more important (after a hiatus of 20 years when it was the norm) and ultimately there will be more virtual PCs than PCs. This means that ultimately, any PC OS is more likely to be running on a virtual PC than a real one. At that point it makes sense that software should be written with that knowledge in mind. Ie. OSes should have an API that allows them to talk to a host machine and virtualizers should have an API that guest OSes can talk to. This could make it much cleaner to do things like cut-and-paste between different virtual machines running different OSes.

Of course it's hard to imagine MS and Linus agreeing on such an API. But this isn't a zero sum game. People might choose to install Windows because with virtualization they know they will still be able to run Linux easily. Bill Gates will still have sold you a Windows license even though you're spending most of your time running Linux. So it's in the interest of MS and Linux to figure out how to interoperate between virtual machines.

Is Windows capability on Macs a bad thing?

[b0s0z0ku]

After all, MacOS represents maybe 5% of the market. Now software makers will have an excuse not to write versions of their software that run natively under MacOS, since they can just tell people to run under Parallels or Boot Camp. BTW, I'm not using/recommending Parallels until it can utilize a separate partition on the HDD - a seperate partition could theoretically give you the choice between vitualization and running 'doze directly if you have an app that does direct hardware access like some games.

-b.