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Parallels Desktop 10 Update Brings Windows 10 Technical Preview to Macs
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All I can speak on is my personal experience. I had an issue several months back when I upgraded from Parallels 8 to 10. As soon as I did Coherence mode just quit working right. Whenever I would click on the windows icon nothing happened (when it works right the start menu pops up). I emailed their support team and had someone back with me within a day working on the issue. When they couldn't get it sorted out they bumped it up to their development team and I had one of their engineers on the phone with me going through various config files until they eventually figured it out. Literally had one of their developers on the phone with me for about 2 hours that day.
Once it was sorted out they then followed up a bit after that just to make sure that it was still working right and that there weren't any other issues.
Like all customer service everything is in the eye of the beholder. One person might have a great experience while another person has a terrible one. Personally, the times I've had to contact them in the past have all gone very smoothly and they've been almost Apple-like with the way they try to do everything they can to help me out.
Die Geldautomaten
That title translates into "the cash machine" from German. I am also pretty fed up with the constant paid upgrades and will seriously look into switching back to VMWare this next go around.
Parallels IP Holdings GmbH should follow the model deployed by TeamViewer GmbH and open a US sales/customer service office. Before they opened an office in the US, TeamViewer had horrible US-centric customer service.
Understand that customer service in Germany doesn't exist in the same manner as it does in the US. Walk into a retail store there and you will not be jumped by every sales associate. There is no such thing as proactive service. You will be ignored till you firmly ask for assistance.
That title translates into "the cash machine" from German. I am also pretty fed up with the constant paid upgrades and will seriously look into switching back to VMWare this next go around.
Parallels IP Holdings GmbH should follow the model deployed by TeamViewer GmbH and open a US sales/customer service office. Before they opened an office in the US, TeamViewer had horrible US-centric customer service.
Understand that customer service in Germany doesn't exist in the same manner as it does in the US. Walk into a retail store there and you will not be jumped by every sales associate. There is no such thing as proactive service. You will be ignored till you firmly ask for assistance.
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Unfortunately VMWare follows a similar model. Every year that OS X gets updated, we get a paid upgrade for Fusion. The previous version worked beautifully with Mavericks. It did not work very well with Yosemite. Just trying to move a window is painful. Everything is in slow motion, as if you're using remote desktop over a very slow connection.
VMWare Fusion update window popped up and told me about IMPROVED PERFORMANCE in version 7. So I paid for it, like I have been doing for the last few years. Performance is exactly the same - rubbish. VMWare fusion support forums are no help and other users have the same issues, even though we are on 7.1.
Thanks, I had not checked into their pricing model yet. I will have to contemplate next steps. I have no problem paying for worthy upgrades, but these are getting a bit ludicrous.
Parallels update model is based on OS releases not features. 
New version of OSX? Now you need a new version of Parallels! Pay to update, even though the version you are running is only a year old!
New version of Windows? See above!
Instead of just updating the product to work, they have a paid upgrade every year, mainly because of OSX.
New version of OSX? Now you need a new version of Parallels! Pay to update, even though the version you are running is only a year old!
New version of Windows? See above!
Instead of just updating the product to work, they have a paid upgrade every year, mainly because of OSX.
It sounds like both applications have the exact same fleecing model that consists of yearly paid upgrades with no obvious new features. The last time I checked the VMWare Fusion forums, the questions about performance issues had not been answered, although in one particular instance a user with thousands of posts told the thread starter that he should have used the free trial of VMF 7 to check for performance issues beforehand and because he didn't do that, he should not be complaining. That left a sour taste in my mouth, even though the user did not appear to be a VMWare employee.
Maybe "official" support for Win 10 Tech Previews? I've been running the TPs since the beginning, and haven't yet updated PD - I've noticed some glitches that I hope are addressed, like the recursive loop of PD constantly wanting to install Tools on startup on some of the "Fast" build channel TPs. I switched to the "Slow" TP channel to get around this...
I bought Parallels 10 a couple of weeks ago and the Windows 10 setup was built right in. Not sure how much more official it can get!
I'm a programmer myself so I tend to be the guy making these same points, but Parallels really bangs the paid upgrade drum more often than I feel is fair. The upgraded product isn't always much of an improvement either. In my case, I wish I had not upgraded to Parallels 10.
Parallels made a lot of suggestions to the point that Yosemite would break Parallels 9 and you really needed to upgrade Parallels if you expected to continue using Parallels. Quite the contrary, I only had problems with Yosemite after I upgraded to Parallels 10 and Parallels 10 not only gave me no noticable improvement, it corrupted my Windows 7 and Windows 8 VM when attempting to upgrade. It killed both of them.
Luckily I had backups, but as soon as I ported them over to Parallels 10... yup, kaboom.
I'd have no complaint paying what they want if their software worked as well as they claim it does. Now I'd just be happy if their new product didn't destroy my VMs.
Interesting post... I'm still running VMWare Fusion 5 / Windows 7 on OS X10.9
I will look at upgrading to Fusion 8? / Windows 10 on OS X 10.11 in the fall on my new MBA
I will look at upgrading to Fusion 8? / Windows 10 on OS X 10.11 in the fall on my new MBA
Like I said previously, everyone's experience is going to be different. Parallels is good about offering a free trial of their software, so you don't have to blindly upgrade on their word alone. They give you 30 days to try it out and see if it is worth while for you.
Personally, I saw a performance bump going from version 9 to version 10....so I paid the $50 upgrade fee to get me there. But I didn't just upgrade day one. I made a backup of my VM, downloaded version 10 and tried it out for several weeks before making that call. My previous story about them going above and beyond to fix the coherence issue I was having happened during my free trial. They were supporting me on software that I hadn't even paid for at that point.
What I meant by "recursive" was "Launch PD 10 > PD 10 Tools COM file opens > PD 10 Tools installation window opens > PD Tools install completes > PD Tools prompts for a restart". Upon the restart or a reboot, do it all over again.
And, this recursive loop only occurred on the Fast Builds, as I'd alluded to in my OP, not on the slow builds or the stable build.
FWIW, that's also what Parallels indicated they'd addressed: copied from the updater:
"This update for Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac build 10.1.4 (28883) addresses overall stability issues, and includes the following fixes and enhancements:
- Resolves an issue with Parallels Tools continual re-installation on Windows 10 Technical Preview (emphasis added).
- The most recent Windows 10 Technical Preview build is now available for download from the Parallels Wizard."
Finally there is a good news for the keen users of the windows operating system. Microsoft has now started providing free updations to windows 7 or 8 or 8.1 to users to windows 10 but this update is free only for one year. Eventually after that you will have to pay for it. Indeed this is a good trick of Microsoft to make money and let more and more users and organisations to use latest versions and facility provided by the hard working software geeks. On one hand some interesting features like new web browser Spartan has been introduced whereas on the other hand many new updates to apps has been released free of cost. So windows users might be very happy. Lets see what else Microsoft brings for us in future.