Networking support is good; I had no issues printing to a networked laser printer, and I was able to see the other Macs on the household network.Since then, the software has been greatly improved through a seemingly constant stream of betas, release candidates, and officially released updates.
This article is based on build 3170, Release Candidate 3; Parallels says that there are no substantial differences between that build and the official release, beyond some bug fixes.) Today, this 80 program is the most-refined option for running a full Windows installation next to OS X on an Intel Mac. Parallels also supports nearly any non-Apple operat-ing system you can think of, from Windows 3.11 through Vista, Linux, FreeBSD, OS2, Solaris, and even good old MS-DOS). Using the Windows Express setup assistant, you can install Windows XP or Vista in a couple of mouse clicks. You type your product key, name, and organization on one screen, and then Parallels takes over. Anywhere youd typically have to interact with the Windows installer, Parallels does the job for you. Parallels Memory Allocation Mac OS X And BackParallels Tools adds a number of features that ease the integration of Windows with OS X, such as the ability to move your mouse seamlessly from Parallels to Mac OS X and back again. The process is just a bit more complicated if you want to install other operating systems. You use File: New to open the OS Installation Assistant, and tell it to create a Custom virtual machine. On the next screen, you select the type of OS (Linux, OS2, and so on), as well as the specific version (Red Hat Linux, OS2 Warp 4, and so on) you want to install. Youll then have to specify a memory allocation and drive-space setup for your virtual machine, and then start the installationyou can install from CDs or from a disk image. Software support Assuming that youre using Parallels to run Windows, youll want to check out Parallels Coherence mode as soon as you can (see Coherence Mode). Its a way of configuring Parallels so the Windows OS itself is hidden: all you see is an application windowwhich happens to belong to a Windows applicationon your OS X desktop. Those apps have their own resizable windows, their icons appear in OS Xs Dock, and the Windows taskbar is present along the bottom of the screen (though you can drag it to any edge, just as you can when running Windows natively). ![]() Further easing integration, Parallels supports full drag and drop between the Windows and OS X environments. You can copy a folder of files from one environment to the other, add items to the taskbar in Coherence mode, and even drop documents onto Windows application windows. At the other extreme, you can make your Mac look like its solely a Windows machine simply by switching to full-screen mode. When you want to get back to your native OS, just press option-return and youre back in windowed mode. It will run nearly any Windows program you throw at it, with performance thats nearly as good as youd get on a similarly configured native Windows box. You can also run Windows XP from a Boot Camp partitionmeaning that you need only one copy of Windows XP.) I say. So if youre running an application thats particularly CPU-intensive, itll take a bit of a performance hit. Also, Parallels doesnt yet offer accelerated graphics, so many games are out of the question. And Parallels wont run 64-bit Windows, but thatll be a problem for only a small subset of users. Performance is nice and snappyin fact, its the snappiest of the four programs I tested (see How They Compare: Virtualization Software). I wasnt able to get Windows Media Player to work (it kept telling me I needed an MPEG-2 codec), but I was able to use the free. You may still run into problems with things such as USB dongles, which some programs use for copy protection, but most other USB devices should work just fine.
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