Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Parallels 4.0 Promises Significant Performance Improvements

Does anyone know if P4 has updated their multi-monitor support to see each monitor separately instead of as one large screen? I run multiple monitors at different resolutions and in P3, it thought the space above and below the smaller monitor was part of the standard desktop, leading to windows being opened outside of where I could see them. VM Fusion, on the other hand, sees the separate monitors as separate with discrete resolutions.

Anyone know how P4 handles multi-monitor setups?
 
This may be a dumb question BUT?

I bought Parallels v2 a while back, and the next week v3 came out. Like a dummy, I upgraded for another $80 or so. Anyways, I was not happy that not all of the Vista features were working so I moved to Boot Camp.

Can anyone tell me, and maybe this was fixed during a v3 update, if Windows Vista will now support Aero in it via Parallels?

If Aero is fully featured, and the software will allow me to do some of the fun things in Vista Ultimate.

If it doesn't work, I guess I will stick with Boot Camp. Ashame, because makes more sense to boot Windows virtually without shutting down the computer and booting in.

take care all and have fun with Parallels v4...
 
painful!

If upgrades are like dentist visits...

Upgrading Mac OS X is like a cleaning. Not quite a walk in the park, but generally not that painful, and you feel a whole lot better after it's done.

Upgrading Windoze is like going in to get all your teeth removed, to be replaced with dentures or implants. You wished you took 5 valiums instead of just one. When it's over, it appears to look better, but you can no longer taste or feel anything.

Upgrading parallels is probably something in between... like getting a root canal with no anaesthesia. It's a really unpleasant experience, you're never sure how it's gonna end, but when/if it does, you give thanks to every God you can think of. It is definitely one of the most unpleasant, if not *the most* unpleasant thing you can do on your mac.

I just upgraded from parallels 2.5 to 4.0. I'm amazed! that it completed. It went through a four step process. Step 1 completed fine. Step 2 finally timed out with an error message, threw me into windows... mouse was frozen, so i just randomly tabbed around... something magically happened, then I magically got thrown back into step three of the upgrade process... same as step 2... then step four, same routine... 2.5 hours later, i leave the dentist, my mouth completely beat up, numb, but somehow feeling a little cleaner. Ughhh... if Apple can make upgrading the OS so easy, I have to believe it's possible for Parallels to be less unpleasant!
 
Scottsdale said:
I bought Parallels v2 a while back, and the next week v3 came out. Like a dummy, I upgraded for another $80 or so. Anyways, I was not happy that not all of the Vista features were working so I moved to Boot Camp.

Can anyone tell me, and maybe this was fixed during a v3 update, if Windows Vista will now support Aero in it via Parallels?

If Aero is fully featured, and the software will allow me to do some of the fun things in Vista Ultimate.

If it doesn't work, I guess I will stick with Boot Camp. Ashame, because makes more sense to boot Windows virtually without shutting down the computer and booting in.

take care all and have fun with Parallels v4...
Click to expand...

Aero will never work in a virtual machine with the current products. This is not exclusive to Parallels.
 
How will it run CS:S on my original macbook (2.16gh, 2GB Ram) though?
Parralls 3 ran at about 15-20fps at lowest settings.
 
matlab?

have anyone tried matlab with parallels? how it works?

currently I'm using matlab with fusion 2, but I'm not very happy with it since fusion seems have problem with matlab & exposè (windows aren't shown correctly)
 
Read up first - be careful!

I just upgraded from version 3.0 to 4.0 and it was a nightmare. Be very careful about upgrading if you are an existing customer. There are a LOT of issues going on in the support forums for parallels (http://forum.parallels.com/forumdisplay.php?f=59). I had to go through so many gyrations to get my image actually upgraded I almost lost my hair.

I finally did manage to get it working after flip-flopping versions and re-running the upgrade NUMEROUS times. The converter isn't quite ready for prime-time so make sure you backup your images and still have the old software (version 3) handy as well as ALL of your permanent keys and upgrade keys. Oh - and make sure that you have your image completely shutdown before upgrading. And make sure it's a normal shutdown and not just a hang at the screen "Windows is shutting down" and quitting the image. That's apparently what started my upgrade nightmare.
 
I tried this out last night, installed Vista, installed the Parallels tools. It booted up on Coherence mode with almost everything (folders, volumes, task bar by dock) integrated. Very annoying. I know that one of the features is "seamless integration" but it should be an opt in feature. Not just boom your dock icon is now your start menu.

The "Security" feature seems to control the integration level between the guest and the host. The default is in the middle which allows folder sharing. The default should be High and make the user enable shared folders.

Performance wise, everything was fine after I turned on the "Adaptive Hypervisor". Without it on, doing anything in OS X (like Safari) would stutter periodically.

For first impressions, I'm not impressed. I'll wait for some more in depth articles on performance compared to Fusion 2 before I invest anymore time.
 
Aero does not work in either VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop because neither one offers the required WDDM graphics drivers for their products.

According to some blogs, VMWare --might-- include such drivers in one of the next upgrades, but they are a major effort to write and there would only be very few benefits, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

I won't write an in-depth article about performance comparisons here, but performance - especially that of Vista in a VM - was the main reason why I switched from Parallels Desktop 3 to VMWare Fusion 2. Vista is a beast that brings any computer to its knees, even my Mac Pro with 8 GB RAM (in BootCamp, mind you). Vista was unusable in Parallels Desktop 3, but it actually ran as good as one could hope for in VMWare Fusion 2 (with 3 GB RAM and two CPU cores allocated to it).

Parallels 3 only worked well with Windows XP (that is where it excels and what it was made for). Most versions of Linux just didn't want to work in it and FreeBSD also was mainly a no-show.

In VMWare Fusion 2, so far I only have experienced poor performance of the 64-Bit version of FreeBSD 7. Ubuntu Linux versions that did not even boot in Parallels worked perfectly well in Fusion, including the Fusion tools.

VMWare Fusion 2 leaves the impression of being a much more professional tool, especially when it comes to importing physical machines into virtual machines or when you need to manipulate hard disk images or the actual hardware configuration of the VM.

I don't know how Parallels Desktop 4 behaves, but to be honest, I no longer care. The shortcomings of PD3 forced me to purchase Fusion 2 a few weeks ago, and I certainly won't spend any more money on another PD update now.
 
Not as good as Fusion on advanced graphics

I upgraded to Parallels 4. There are many improvements in this version, but the compatibility with advanced graphics capabilities (eg pixel shader 2) is not as good as Fusion 2. I have a few image processing PC software requiring advanced graphic card functionality. Fusion 2 was the first version of both virtualization softwares that could finally run that image processing PC software. I was hoping that Parallels 4 could run it even better, but the same error messages of incomplete graphic functionality pop up on Parallels 4 as when I ran it on Parallels 3, and the image processing software does not run. So I'll keep using Fusion 2 for now, even if I have a preference for Parallels in general.
 
Escaping the world of Windows Bubdles

Oh god.

Has anyone noticed how parallels, vmware and every joe schmoe is now bundling something with windows on vmware or parallels.

ugh...

contamination starting again...

K.
 
So far I have started with a fresh install of Vista using the Parallels demo.

2 hrs later its still installing...

Parallels is a C**P fest. Fusion at least has a stable install.

Edit - I had to stop Parallels and quit it from OS X and restart the boot process now it seems to work now to test some of my stuff. Ok back again.... I cannot get the Audio working so without that working apps wont launch.... Ah the joys of testing clearly still beta software...
 
kdenton said:
I upgraded to Parallels 4. There are many improvements in this version, but the compatibility with advanced graphics capabilities (eg pixel shader 2) is not as good as Fusion 2. I have a few image processing PC software requiring advanced graphic card functionality. Fusion 2 was the first version of both virtualization softwares that could finally run that image processing PC software. I was hoping that Parallels 4 could run it even better, but the same error messages of incomplete graphic functionality pop up on Parallels 4 as when I ran it on Parallels 3, and the image processing software does not run. So I'll keep using Fusion 2 for now, even if I have a preference for Parallels in general.
Click to expand...

What image processing software?
 
Same Old Poor Multi-monitor Support

Installed the Parallels 4 software on my system with XP Pro. Enabled multiple-monitor support and sure enough, it immediately moved the top of my open windows into the space ABOVE the top of my smaller monitor, giving me no way to move or resize them.

Parallels Team - please add support for discrete monitor resolutions. Lack of that makes using VMWare a must for me, though Parallels has much better file and application integration in my opinion.
 
Works for Me !!!

Installed the Upgrade on my MacPro and the speed increase is quite impressive. CounterStrike: Source is a billion times more playable now. I spent a good 2 hours on it, when I should have been working.
 
mackroyd said:
Installed the Upgrade on my MacPro and the speed increase is quite impressive. CounterStrike: Source is a billion times more playable now. I spent a good 2 hours on it, when I should have been working.
Click to expand...

Its your first post.... so... I will now have to try it with XP. I will do a side by side test... I don't Believe you. Have you ever checked out how many fishy websites claiming to be Parallels only ordering site... they have many many alternate publishers.
 
With current currency rate, a 10 dollar discount is no use for me

1 Dollar used to be 9,800 in IDR, now it is about 12,000

9,800*50 = 490,000; 12,000*40 = 480,000

I'll just wait until Parallels get 4-5 revisions and the currency return to normal
 
I currently have VMWare Fusion. If I download a Parallels trial, will it mess up anything for my VMWare?

I just want to see if its worth thinking about!

thanks :D
 
I purchased the 4.0 upgrade yesterday. My experiences so far:

1) I did not need to reactivate my copy of Windows XP Professional upgrading from v3 to 4.

2) Just had a complete freeze of my system, first time in months. Mouse still worked but nothing else. Force rebooted.

3) I haven't really noticed any increase of speed, but definitely reduced CPU usage when idle (at 6.5% now, it used to hover around 30-40% I think).

4) Just got an email from Parallels saying they accidentally gave my upgrade key out to a few other people, so they provided me with a new key and told me to replace the old key with the new one.
 
Ok Parallels 4 Sucks!


I did full installations on a Mac Pro 8 Core. 4GB RAM

SAME XP , RAM Allocated & Same HD Size on the same drive.

Install was painless in Fusion.

Install in Parallels = Frustation....
PD somehow had to authorize an encrypted folder on my desktop over and over. Overall install was painless. But after the install I had to reboot a few times before everything clicked. I found the shared folder part of PD confusing and turned it off.

The Test

I use Edius 4.6 all the time. Its a High End editing program like Final Cut for Windows. For my setup I copied a 4gb folder of demo material to the Virtual Disk of each. Parallels just had problems with copying the files (took 4 times as long to copy as well when compared with Fusion) and running programs until I rebooted. After that things clicked.

The straight to the point fact is. Edius running in Fusion is Usable... it even comes pretty close to BootCamp Speed and is a joy to use since I don't have to re-boot out of the warm embrace of OS X. But Parallels is Mushy and Slow, Window redraw is very apparent. Unusable!


The OS itself -

There are few hiccups in Fusion it Feels like I'm running XP in BootCamp.... but a little slower.. and no 8800 GT graphics card.

Parallels has many pauses and waits so it feels fast one second and then slows down. You never really know when its going to happen.

My experience with running this one app (edius) is enough to delete Parallels from my machine since I will never use it. I find it hard to believe that Parallels is any faster when running anything else. But I will leave it on my machine for a while if anyone wants anything else tested.
 
Not Impressed

My upgrade went fine except for the fact that now my MX Revolution mouse scroll function works terribly and when you maximize windows it covers the windows taskbar so you can't access the start button unless you un-maximize all windows that are maximized.

Also, tested Half Life 2 and it still runs terribly (basically unplayable unless in 640x480 will all lowest settings). :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back