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Parallels Releases Desktop RC2, Raises Price

aristobrat said:
With Parallels as strong as it is, and the rumor of virtualization being included in 10.5, I'm wondering if Microsoft will even bother with VPC for Intel Macs.
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I doubt it.
 
ChrisA said:
I've been interrested in software pricing for many years. How to choose a price? I know one person who had a software product that he got into reatail. It did not sell well so he experimented. He had some store raise the price and others lower it and watched. It turned out that raising the price actually got more units to sell. It turns out that as long as you can aford the price, people think the higher priced product must be better so they tend to buy the highest priced product they can afford. Stupid yes but people do not know much about computers and less about software so they base decisions about it on the aspects of it they DO understand.

Just look at this thread. I wrote about QEMU. It's free but do you see a stampede of mac users running to download and install it? No. they see a cardboard box and a price tag and figure price equals quality

In this case, I don't think this price increase was done to make the product look better. I figure it is to recover the development costs before Apple includes virtualization into Mac OS and the market evaporates. Kind of like no one would pay for a web browser, next year no one will pay for virtual machine software.

But still it's an interresting question: What do you charge for a product that costs nearly nothing to manufacture?
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QEMU is also a lot, lot slower than Parallels by virtue of the fact that even on Intel Macs it runs an Intel Emulator rather than virtualisation (the accelerator is still not available for OSX AFAIK)
I tried QEMU when I first got my MBP and it was horrendously slow (probably about the same speed as VPC on my G5). Compare that to Parallels running about 90% native speed and it's easy to see why not many people are rushing for the free solution!
 
Good point. Some people dont have a copy of XP lying around from an old pc. It's only cheaper if you already have a copy of xp.

Makosuke said:
Only half true about being cheaper; VirtualPC with no OS may cost about $120 and Parallels has some serious advantages. But if you're planning on running Windows, remember that VPC with a copy of XP Pro is "only" $215 ($250 MSRP). Buying a non-upgrade XP Pro license (which you'd have to do with Parallels if you didn't already have a license) costs $280 discount, about $300 regular price.

Now, technically the XP Pro license that comes with VPC is an "OEM" license which only runs about $150 if you can find one, and this might be legit to use with Parallels (not quite sure), but even then the total cost is $220, about the same as VPC.

This isn't to say that $80 is a ripoff, as Parallels is drastically more capable on an Intel Mac than VPC is on a PPC one, but then there's really no good comparison between the two products until MS releases a new version of VPC--it's obviously easier to run a virtual machine on the same architecture than on a different one (I'd guess cheaper to develop as well), and there is no VPC for Intel Macs yet.
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I am a real estate agent that has been imprisoned in the windoze world of defending myself from all the malware and overhead to fight it. I started with Apple with a IIe and GUI with a LISA and had to go "dark" 7 years ago.

Now I can rejoin the enlightened and bought a Macbook the moment they hit the shelves due to Parallels great solution and Apple's great new products. I knew it was possible and they were first with a viable product. Lotus 123 may have overcome Visicalc but I was one happy camper with my 13 sector version because I could do what I wanted to do when I needed to.

So what if the raised the price, it is a great deal and for their foresight and fortitude to create and soon ship a great product, I pray they get stinking rich. It caused me to buy a the Mac I wanted and run the few vertical apps I need to and for everything else, there is my new Mac and the elegance and ease of Mac OS (sounds like a mastercard ad).

Apple is the most inovative, creative, and contributive company out there. As McKay said a long time ago, "When the user gets distracted by the operating system, creativity and productivity suffer". With a Mac, it just works!
 
Apple 10.5 Roadmap Will Be Revealed In The August 7 SF WWDC SteveNote

gomakeitreal said:
great minds think alike!
i haven't got an intel mac yet, but i am also tempted to pre-order a copy given the price increase. but at the same time, the increase in price gives out signal (at least to me) that leopard will have similar tech and they will become outdated. hate that apple does not let ppl know their roadmap :mad:
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They do. Just not so far in advance that Microshaft can incorporate all of it in their copy-kat OS. :) The August 7 SF WWDC SteveNote will reveal much of what you seek.
 
RichP said:
Someone send me an email when any one of these virtualization/guest OS programs can run hardware graphics acceleration. Then, and only then, does it become a better solution than bootcamp for those who have a need for Windoze.
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Only true if you need graphics acceleration. Parallels saves me the time needed to shut down OS X, reboot into Windows, shut down Windows, and reboot into OS X. It adds up. Plus, with Parallels I can easy cut and paste between Mac OS and Windows.
 
Roller said:
Only true if you need graphics acceleration.
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Yup yup. Although that means quite a few games won't play well in Parallels, I was surprised to see that videos play perfectly fine. Now if I get a WMV that won't play in OS X, I can play it in Parallels. :)
 
aristobrat said:
With Parallels as strong as it is, and the rumor of virtualization being included in 10.5, I'm wondering if Microsoft will even bother with VPC for Intel Macs.
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I'm thinking that they might, still. You would probably find that they can figure out a better way of integrating the two (drag and drop files from one desktop to another, etc...).

Also, there's the bit mentioned earlier about how much a copy of Windoze costs alongside VPC, vs. just buying a store shelf copy. They might see an opportunity to sell more legit copies of Windoze bundled with VPC as opposed to the many that will be bootlegged with other virtualization options.

I guess a lot of that has to do with what they've seen at the MBU as far as Leopard abilities.
 
DTphonehome said:
I don't even have an Intel Mac, yet I'm tempted to pre-order to lock in the $39 price for when I do get a MB this summer. What do you guys think?
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Definitely, I am extremely impressed with Parallels. We run a medium sized web development business and use Parallels on several Intel Macs for SQL Server and .Net development. Runs great - no real issues - very fast. If it had the shared drives / networking of VPC it would be perfect.

Every release seems to get better
 
iCaffeine said:
I purchased Parallels just to run Office 2003.
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Even Office 2007 Beta 2 runs acceptable fast, means as fast a Office 2004 on MacOSX ;)

I'm already using parallels in my daily pro business. Grafics on MacOSX and Dreamweaver on WinXP. The fast switching between the OS rocks and the speed is great.

Only drive access (I might have to change to a 7200 disc) and grafics could be faster.

But no big bugs yet and everything runs stable. A great software, for an even better price...

:)
 
Please Include Model Speed And RAM Total When Explaining Performance Results

Coyote2006 said:
Even Office 2007 Beta 2 runs acceptable fast, means as fast a Office 2004 on MacOSX ;)

I'm already using parallels in my daily pro business. Grafics on MacOSX and Dreamweaver on WinXP. The fast switching between the OS rocks and the speed is great.

Only drive access (I might have to change to a 7200 disc) and grafics could be faster.

But no big bugs yet and everything runs stable. A great software, for an even better price...

:)
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That's great. On what model with how much RAM installed? :rolleyes: No frame of reference in your post. Thanks.
 
Multimedia said:
That's great. On what model with how much RAM installed? :rolleyes: No frame of reference in your post. Thanks.
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I am running Parallels on an iMac Core Duo 17 inch with 512MB RAM.

Under Windows XP, Office 2003 runs good.

Yes, i am sure that if I had more RAM it would be better. ;)
 
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