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A fair warning to anyone considering Parallels

V

valiar

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 14, 2006
222
0
Washington, DC
Parallels and VMWare Fusion have been two main applications for virtualizing Windows (and other OSes) on Mac OS X.

Parallels was the pioneering product here. I was a loyal user since 3.0, which was 4 upgrade cycles ago. Parallels has always been great software that just worked.

Starting from version 5 or 6, the software shows you ads as you start it up. Yes, you heard me right. A full, paid version displays a glaring, nasty "buy-me-now" ad on startup, complete with Facebook links to "share" it. Yeah, right.
The ad windows have a "Disable" checkbox, which does nothing. It prevents that specific ad from appearing, but the next ad campaign is going to spam you in the face.

Issuing a

defaults write com.parallels.Parallels\ Desktop ProductPromo.ForcePromoOff -bool YES

command in the terminal will get rid of the ads until the next application patch. Then you will have to go to the terminal again.

The developers do not publicly supply the defaults key information. The anti-ad threads on their forum are some of the most active ones, and they get strategically deleted and pruned by the moderators. Showing these ads in a hamfisted manner is definitely a business decision that someone made.

See this, for example http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=258991
(if the link gets killed - it means the thread got silently deleted).

I submitted a bug report regarding this, because this is a bug, and got no response.

My own business decision is that Parallels 7 is the last update I purchased from that company. I am switching to VMWare Fusion, even if that means I have to readjust my workflow.
 
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Ads in a full paid application, to me, is unacceptable. Thanks for the news, I did not know that they did this. I was considering buying Parallels but I'll stick with Fusion, it has always worked well for me anyway.
 
I've got an installation of Parallels Desktop 7 which I got with my new RMBP. When I first launched it it not only displayed one promotion/ad, but one or two more at other stages of the process I went through in using it. Each has an option to dismiss/don't ask again, and in each case I chose that option. Parallels no longer displays any kind of promotional content to me, so maybe that's all that is necessary.

That said, I did find it to be in extremely poor taste. If someone's going to buy a program they should reasonably expect that they won't have advertisements tossed in front of them as part of the process.

I wouldn't recommend that someone give up Parallels, though. I used Parallels exclusively in the earlier days and it worked reasonably well. At one point I got annoyed with their upgrade cycle and hopped over to VMWare Fusion on a sale, and stuck with them for a few versions. VMWare Fusion has always been infuriating to me regardless of how I configured it (at least on somewhat aged machines like the mid-2009 MacBook Pro I was using). After switching back to Parallels everything started running much more smoothly.
 
This is a timely discussion for me. I am thinking of purchasing Parallels or VMWare in the future, but this kind of practice by the developers (if it is actually as described) is a serious knock against Parallels. I'll have to look more into it, but I would be very disinclined to buy any software that displayed ads to me, as you have described.
 
The only "advertisement" I ever noticed was a warning that my old version of Parallels would not run in OS 10.7 and suggested upgrading to Parallels 7. I think the OP is blowing this out of proportion.
 
You sure you haven't installed a pirated copy or perhaps have some kind of mac virus/adware ? I have had P7 installed since launch and P6 before it, keep it up-to-date and haven't seen a single ad.
 
Sedulous said:
The only "advertisement" I ever noticed was a warning that my old version of Parallels would not run in OS 10.7 and suggested upgrading to Parallels 7. I think the OP is blowing this out of proportion.
Click to expand...

Please read the linked forum thread, as well as the reviews for Parallels 7 on Amazon.com (or just google "parallels ads").
Also, by your own admission, you are not running Parallels 7, which is what this thread is about. They started showing way more ads after the 6->7 update. If you wish, I can even post screenshots.

If the application had a working preference to disable this behavior, this would have been simply bad taste. As it stands, there is no way to disable the ads, and the developer deletes any post on their forum that mentions the current workaround for the problem. THAT is what got me all worked-up.
 
I am a systems administrator by trade, and because of this will no longer install or recommend Parallels.

They sure are doing a good job of shooting themselves in the foot! With a .50 BMG even.

VMWare Fusion is, at the very least, just as good, and has never had ads that I can recall. Also, it has a better track record of continuing to work after OS X updates; Parallels tends to break, requiring you to PAY MONEY to upgrade the software, just to keep using it. Sleazy!
 
zorinlynx said:
VMWare Fusion is, at the very least, just as good, and has never had ads that I can recall. Also, it has a better track record of continuing to work after OS X updates; Parallels tends to break, requiring you to PAY MONEY to upgrade the software, just to keep using it. Sleazy!
Click to expand...

Honestly I was a big Parallels supporter from the day they started selling it (I purchased it that day). But when it got to Parallels 3.0 and an update to the OS killed it's functionality I started to get worried. Even worse when I contacted support for help, they couldn't figure out why it wasn't working, they kept telling me, "I should work . . . " but it wasn't. Then they release Parallels 4.0 and said that unless I upgraded to that version they wouldn't support me any more because they said 4.0 would fix the problem. So I downloaded the demo of 4.0 and it did NOT fix my problem. I've never gone back to them; I switched to VMWare Fusion.

Fusion isn't as fast as Parallels but I don't use it for gaming, and it works very reliably without crashing as often as Parallels did (note, I haven't used Parallels since 4.0). I also love the fact that I can copy the images from Mac to Windows, to Linux and share with my co-workers; we use them all the time for development environments. We create a whole new image for every project so that we have the right tools installed, the right versions, and configured the same way. Works great.

That being said, I've been considering buying Parallels for home, but it sounds like the company is still playing it's games. I can't support that.
 
Everyone always forgets Virtualbox.

I run Fusion as I'm a long time VMware user (workstation on PC since 1998 or so? and vSphere on our cluster), but if you're looking for something pretty damn good and FREE (most of it is open source), virtualbox is available.

The UI is slightly less slick, but thats it. Virtualbox is cross platform too.
 
throAU said:
Everyone always forgets Virtualbox.

I run Fusion as I'm a long time VMware user (workstation on PC, and vSphere on our cluster), but if you're looking for something pretty damn good and FREE (most of it is open source), virtualbox is available.
Click to expand...

I've been using VirtualBox at home to test it out. It works OK. But I've crashed it quite a few times, and it is MUCH slower than Fusion, about 50% the speed actually.
 
Everybody has their personal favorites.

I started with Virtualbox because it was free.
Got a discounted upgrade to VMware because it was faster.
Competitive Upgrade to Parallels 7 to support Lion.
Faster still no ads and no regrets.

Whoever supports Mountain Lion the best gets our business next.
 
CylonGlitch said:
I've been using VirtualBox at home to test it out. It works OK. But I've crashed it quite a few times, and it is MUCH slower than Fusion, about 50% the speed actually.
Click to expand...



Can't say i've noticed any speed issues? Then again I don't try and run games in it...


The main reason I don't do parallels is due to the crashing issues, disk corruption, etc I've heard about.

Also, the reason Fusion is/was slower at graphics is because they emulate it "properly" rather than some short cut hack to make it run fast (at the cost of long term feature support, and potentially security and stability).

Stability is important to me....
 
valiar said:
Starting from version 5 or 6, the software shows you ads as you start it up. Yes, you heard me right. A full, paid version displays a glaring, nasty "buy-me-now" ad on startup, complete with Facebook links to "share" it. Yeah, right.
Click to expand...
I have version 7 and I've never seen any ad of any kind. It sounds like something specific to your computer.
 
I rarely get Parallels 7 ads. And it is ads for related products and not something like a Ford ad or a new Android phone. It is too much work to just switch all my virtual images to VMware so I just deal with it.
 
I've never had a any ads in Parallels 7 either. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but I purchased the full version upfront and downloaded the install files as instructed in my confirmation email.
 
valiar said:
Please read the linked forum thread, as well as the reviews for Parallels 7 on Amazon.com (or just google "parallels ads").
Also, by your own admission, you are not running Parallels 7, which is what this thread is about. They started showing way more ads after the 6->7 update. If you wish, I can even post screenshots.

If the application had a working preference to disable this behavior, this would have been simply bad taste. As it stands, there is no way to disable the ads, and the developer deletes any post on their forum that mentions the current workaround for the problem. THAT is what got me all worked-up.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've seen these ads occasionally, but I mostly use Parallels 5, so they don't appear too often. I thought there was a "Don't show again" button, but I can't bring the dialog up again to confirm that.

Likewise, I don't like paying for something and still being pestered with adverts (TV is bad enough). Reminds me of when Apple used to put a "Get Quicktime Pro" icon on the desktop which (IIRC) used to pop up and run every time you started up your Mac. If you deleted the movie, the OS/Quicktime replaced it.

It isn't nice that they're deleting those posts.
 
Been using Parallels since version 3. Am currently running version 7. Have yet to ever see an ad, but as stated earlier, I would have to reconsider their product if I ever did.
 
Yeah I've used Parallels since version 1 and yes there are ads even with a full paid license. You can disable them with the checkbox and they do not show up again.

Below is an example of a Parallels 7 ad. It's not a computer-specific thing...
 

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