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Parallels is a bag of hurt.
As soon as you buy it, they want to charge you for the next version
say 2-4 weeks later.
It even looks as if they are waiting, not include everything and then add.

Gave up on parallels long time ago.


If I remember correctly they wanted me to buy a completely new version after an OS X upgrade. Parallels 9 didn't work anymore. Worst company attitude I've ever experienced.
 
I have no problem with them charging for upgrades. Their software has to interface with OS X at the lowest levels, and when the underlying OS changes, they have to make sure their code works with it.
 
I have no problem with them charging for upgrades. Their software has to interface with OS X at the lowest levels, and when the underlying OS changes, they have to make sure their code works with it.

Sure their software runs at a fairly in depth level, but in the time I have bought and upgraded from Parallels 7 to 8 to 9 to 10 I have bought or upgraded Windows OS, OS X, MS Office (Win & Mac), Adobe Pro, CCC, iStat Menus and multiple other apps. Parallels is by far leading the way in terms of money spent during that time on an app (over $200).

Ok... So charge for an upgrade, but why make it so expensive. They have pop up adds in the software as well. And they charge again for an ongoing subscription of Parallels Access.
 
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Am I missing something. Is Cortana believed to be better than Siri? Why would someone with a Mac want to use Cortana?

Could say almost the same about Pages and Numbers vs MicroSoft Office, let’s just wait and see eh?
 
Parallels is a bag of hurt.
As soon as you buy it, they want to charge you for the next version
say 2-4 weeks later.
It even looks as if they are waiting, not include everything and then add.

Gave up on parallels long time ago.

VMware Fusion is by far the better alternative, plus you can install it on as many Macs as you own!
 
VMware Fusion is by far the better alternative,

How is it a better alternative? I.e. what does it have that is better than Parallels? It doesn't seem to be much cheaper (only $10 AUD). I am just interested because I have only heard the opposite to what you have said so I have not used it.

Also does it officially work with Windows 10? Its website only says Windows 8.
 
How is it a better alternative? I.e. what does it have that is better than Parallels? It doesn't seem to be much cheaper (only $10 AUD). I am just interested because I have only heard the opposite to what you have said so I have not used it.

Also does it officially work with Windows 10? Its website only says Windows 8.

VM's will run in the current version of Fusion but v8.0 is due to be released within the next 2-4 weeks which will offer full optimisation & support for Windows 10.

I use VMware Workstation/vSphere and a whole host of VMware products so Parallels is a no-go for me. But even if I was in your position I have used both and found Fusion to be the better product. VMware are virtulization specialists and it tells with the quality of software you are using.

Also good luck getting Parallels to run on a new version of OS X. You need to keep paying them all the time. You can trial both for free so why not do that and pick what you prefer?
 
I had Parallels 9 and then Parallels 10. With both, I bought one licence and could activate it on 2 macs, my iMac and my MBP. I know you're not supposed to, but it let me, so I did.

I've now just upgraded to Parallels 11 Pro (the subscription, as an upgrade, for £35 a year), and I can only activate it on one mac. So that little loophole seems to have been nullified. Just saying in case anyone uses PD 10 on 2 machines with 1 licence.....
 
How is it a better alternative? I.e. what does it have that is better than Parallels? It doesn't seem to be much cheaper (only $10 AUD). I am just interested because I have only heard the opposite to what you have said so I have not used it.

Also does it officially work with Windows 10? Its website only says Windows 8.

lets just say that vmware is like the IBM of pc virtualization, they have products ranging from a 'free vm player for windows' up to complete blade computer racks that can vm all servers in your company, while parallels... well they have that vm thing for macs, its cute and some say it is better for games than vmware :)
 
How is it a better alternative? I.e. what does it have that is better than Parallels?
Better support (communities.vmware.com is a great place and there are a lot of other resources out there), it shares 90% of the code with Player, Workstation and ESXi so a lot of resources that you find on the internet will apply to all their products. That means that exchanging VMs between their products is much easier.

They are also more aimed at professional users (sysadmins, developers, businesses) and non-Windows systems. Parallels only really works with Windows. All the advertised features will work fine with Windows. Use something else and only a few of those features are left provided you can actually run that particular non-Windows OS in Parallels. VMware Fusion is more solid and VMware also has products for Windows and Linux (Player & Workstation).
The professional features are about creating clones (full clones, linked clones), multiple snapshots, being able to virtualise ESXi/Hyper-V/etc., run code profiling apps, encrypt the vm, manage VMs on an ESXi host as well as import from and export to ESXi hosts, create your own virtual network, isolate the VM (useful when you are sharing the vm), able to import and export OVA/OVF instances and so on. Basically they allow you to use professional software and create a base VM that you can distribute and manage in your organisation as well as use it for development and testing purposes.

Parallels is more aimed at people wanting to play games in Windows. Only with the last version did it gain certain professional features similar to Fusion and it seems you now have to get a subscription from Parallels in order to use the professional features.
 
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