This is great, though i currently use Parallels, competition can do nothing but good. Plus now I can see if my old VMware images work! 
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VMWare Public Beta, Parallels Beta 2
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how do I make an application from within parallels/windows (.exe) and put it in my OS X dock? what's the processes for letting me do that - so I can just click the .exe on the dock and it'll bring it up within parallels...is that possible?
Get a trial key for 2 weeks. It will only give you one key per e-mail, so use
http://www.10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/email.html
to create an email address, open a new browser window, sign up for the trial of parallels, wait for 10minutemail to get the activation mail, done.
I'm developing a script to do that so I don't have to waste 2 minutes of my life every 2 weeks.
Parallels offers a good product, if you stick the GA versions. With betas, you install at your own risk. The VMware beta is no different. Currently, I'm having no issues with Fusion. I've installed Solaris, Kubuntu, and even XP.
I would take issue with constantly supported, though? By the other users of Parallels. Yup. By Parallels? Not judging by the amount of complaints on the forums.
Don't get me wrong, I bought Parallels when it was first announced, but I think that Fusion will be stiff competition for them.
While it's not Enterprise 4, I've installed Core 6 in Parallels a couple weeks ago and haven't had any problems yet. Granted, I'm not doing any heavy lifting with it, so long-term stability remains to be seen.
Out of interest was it on a macpro, and did it recognise your keyboard.
For me none of the virtual images recognise my apple keybaord or my wireless logitech one, so I can not install anything at all.
YAY for VMWare
I would love to be able to use boot camp partitions with VMWare, maybe that is something that they will throw into the final release. I just hate Parallels just sucks so bad. I have gotten it to work now, but this is after weeks of farting around. I don't think I want to try their beta 2.
I would love to be able to use boot camp partitions with VMWare, maybe that is something that they will throw into the final release. I just hate Parallels just sucks so bad. I have gotten it to work now, but this is after weeks of farting around. I don't think I want to try their beta 2.
Well, I'll for sure give it a try once I get an Intel Mac... Thanks for the heads up, and I hope they keep working the bugs out so almost all the games work!ALL the games im playing through crossover are not in the suported app list. the list contains apps that are tested by codeweavers.
for example- when i launched crossover for the very first time i tried to install counterstrike. cs worked on maxed out quality. perfect!
and you don't deed to install m$win
and the apps are opening just like normal osx apps.
you don't mess up your file system. there is just one folder containing crossover and all the installed apps.
hmm, i cant think fast enough to tell how GREAT crossover is
give a try (60 days for free)
and just read the manual carefully
Actually I was just talking about hardware, there's always software to deal with for sure!
Thanks for the info.
Was this on your MacBook Pro or do you have a Mac Pro as well?
I was primarily wondering if it recognized the hardware on a Mac Pro properly and if the high-end graphics cards performed well for OpenGl calls?
Oh, didn't realize you were asking about a Mac Pro. Sorry, my install is on a laptop, so don't know about your high end graphics card needing a driver or not.
I bought Parallels and then waited for the boot camp partition to be supported so I did not have to load two copies of Windows XP. The 2nd Beta supported this but man it was awful. I had to reregister Windows with each switch between bc and Parallels. Not anymore. Beta 3 is terrific. No troubles at all. I registered this time to get the official upgrade for this nice piece of software. I loaded Parallels software and configured everything in about 10 minutes. I had no glitches. Highly recommended.
Coherence is my next question. I just posted about getting the new beta loaded with no problems and was researching with no luck how to use the coherence feature. I along with millions want to launch Windows media player from OSX to listen to audio books with DRM. Any ideas or documentation anywhere? I did not find any on the Parallels site where the beta is listed other than you can do this.
How about both of them?
Why does it have to be one or the other? We've spent too long with not enough choices on the Mac. I'm not saying that we need 10 or 15 virtualization programs. 2 or 3 wouldn't hurt anything.
Take Excel as an example. No one has ever come close to what it can do for you & your programs. Just see how long they were at version 1! No competition in this case meant no updates. If another spreadsheet would be around that operated at the same level, we'd be seeing many more real advances.
I would think that the same would hold true for virtualization programs. You could counter by saying that Parallels is doing a good job in not resting on their laurels. But the counter could be that the promised release of VMWare Fusion for the Mac is putting the pressure on them not to rest.
This also means that we need Parallels to succeed to keep the pressure on VMWare not to rest on their laurels either. A thied one may be useful also. Just how far this can go before the market becomes too small for any of them to make enough money to be able to stay around.
For now I plan to also purchase VMWare Fusion. I've used Parallels the whole time that I've owned my Intel Mac Pro. It came on my wife's birthday Sep 12th.
Bill the TaxMan
It will be interesting to see how this competition plays out, smaller Parallels with headstart and more interesting features versus the industry behemoth VMWare with its much greater experience and resources.
I'm personally rooting for Parallels
Why does it have to be one or the other? We've spent too long with not enough choices on the Mac. I'm not saying that we need 10 or 15 virtualization programs. 2 or 3 wouldn't hurt anything.
Take Excel as an example. No one has ever come close to what it can do for you & your programs. Just see how long they were at version 1! No competition in this case meant no updates. If another spreadsheet would be around that operated at the same level, we'd be seeing many more real advances.
I would think that the same would hold true for virtualization programs. You could counter by saying that Parallels is doing a good job in not resting on their laurels. But the counter could be that the promised release of VMWare Fusion for the Mac is putting the pressure on them not to rest.
This also means that we need Parallels to succeed to keep the pressure on VMWare not to rest on their laurels either. A thied one may be useful also. Just how far this can go before the market becomes too small for any of them to make enough money to be able to stay around.
For now I plan to also purchase VMWare Fusion. I've used Parallels the whole time that I've owned my Intel Mac Pro. It came on my wife's birthday Sep 12th.
Bill the TaxMan
Not really.
Vmware Fusion can run 2-way SMP, PAE, and 64bit operating systems. Big things that Parallels cannot do.
Although Parallels does have nice windows integration features, if that's what you're looking for.
VMWare seems to be faster. and i just bought Parallels like 2 weeks ago.
And Vmware Fusion is running in debug mode.
There are other reasons to write software then to make money. Some nuts just like to do it. Open Source virtualization software has put price pressure on VMware. Pretty much forced then to give away some of their stuff. Same with Web browsers. Do you think Internet explorer would be free if not for the Moziac, Netscape, Firefox series being free? Solaris and Linux have a kind of virtualization built into the OS. Virtualization is going the same route as web browsers - free and comes with the OS. I don't see how Parallels can last long if that happens. VMware can because their free products are used to hook customers to their expensive enterprise software. The only free virtualization software I know of for the Mac is DEMU and other software based on it. but is not yet so nice as Parallels and VMware but then QEMU can do rosetta-like translations between Intel, PPC, SPARC and some others. So it's a big field with already more then a few players.
Tested Both
Well, today, I tested both of these extensively, and I must say...
I like the Parallels beta better.
Concurrency works very well if you auto hide the dock and put it on the bottom. that way, the Windows taskbar extends across the whole bottom.
VMWare was extremely slow for my Intel MBP C2D compared to Parallels. Both were clean copies of Windows. 3d is still crappy in both....but it's better in Parallels.
Obviously, here's what going to happen soon: everyone will simply make a BootCamp partition, and then parallels/vmware will simply be a program that allows you to run the partition inside mac os. Obviously Parallels has a head start on this, though alot of developers in my area say that it's very buggy in this beta. Like everything Parallels has done so far, it keeps getting better, and will continue to get better.
I will say this about VMWare: if you want to run Solaris, VMWare Fusion works alot better. Parallels is definitely focusing in on XP/Vista, whereas VMWare treats all os virtualizations equally.
Chad Z
Well, today, I tested both of these extensively, and I must say...
I like the Parallels beta better.
Concurrency works very well if you auto hide the dock and put it on the bottom. that way, the Windows taskbar extends across the whole bottom.
VMWare was extremely slow for my Intel MBP C2D compared to Parallels. Both were clean copies of Windows. 3d is still crappy in both....but it's better in Parallels.
Obviously, here's what going to happen soon: everyone will simply make a BootCamp partition, and then parallels/vmware will simply be a program that allows you to run the partition inside mac os. Obviously Parallels has a head start on this, though alot of developers in my area say that it's very buggy in this beta. Like everything Parallels has done so far, it keeps getting better, and will continue to get better.
I will say this about VMWare: if you want to run Solaris, VMWare Fusion works alot better. Parallels is definitely focusing in on XP/Vista, whereas VMWare treats all os virtualizations equally.
Chad Z
Yeah, VMWare does slow my MBP down as well. I tried to install XP and my machine came to a crawl. I assigned two cores and 900MB of memory to it since i had 2GB.
None of this products have changed my doubts about virtualization. I think Bootcamp is still the way for me.
None of this products have changed my doubts about virtualization. I think Bootcamp is still the way for me.
Coherence mode...
I'm a big user of Parallels. I prefer the Mac, but I develop websites and have to use Windows for IE, Visual Studio and Visio. Using bootcamp seems rather pointless as it seems easier to use a much cheaper Windows machine. OK, I'm sure there's good reasons to use bootcamp, just not that many.
So, Coherence mode. Very interesting.
Since switching from Windows I've noticed that I use a Mac differently from Windows in that I now don't maximise the windows as I used to when running Windows (I hope that makes sense!). I still need to for Visual Studio, but when running IE (for testing websites - I wouldn't use the filthy thing out of choice for browsing) I would like to use it in 'Mac' mode, i.e. not full screen.
This is where Coherence mode comes in.
It means I can run my Mac apps - Firefox, DreamWeaver, Word, Entourage, iTunes, etc., in their normal windowed state, and now I can add Internet Exploder to this lot. Yeah, it looks crap, but then Windows is.
Well done Parallels. Some genuine innovation.
There's a couple of screenshots attached. I had to reduce the quality to get the filesize down to the limit.
I'm a big user of Parallels. I prefer the Mac, but I develop websites and have to use Windows for IE, Visual Studio and Visio. Using bootcamp seems rather pointless as it seems easier to use a much cheaper Windows machine. OK, I'm sure there's good reasons to use bootcamp, just not that many.
So, Coherence mode. Very interesting.
Since switching from Windows I've noticed that I use a Mac differently from Windows in that I now don't maximise the windows as I used to when running Windows (I hope that makes sense!). I still need to for Visual Studio, but when running IE (for testing websites - I wouldn't use the filthy thing out of choice for browsing) I would like to use it in 'Mac' mode, i.e. not full screen.
This is where Coherence mode comes in.
It means I can run my Mac apps - Firefox, DreamWeaver, Word, Entourage, iTunes, etc., in their normal windowed state, and now I can add Internet Exploder to this lot. Yeah, it looks crap, but then Windows is.
Well done Parallels. Some genuine innovation.
There's a couple of screenshots attached. I had to reduce the quality to get the filesize down to the limit.
Attachments
I tried the latest beta but was unable to use my existing Boot Camp drive in my Mac Pro (it is my fourth hard drive, actually) during setup. The "use boot camp" option was grayed out.
I'd prefer not to install Windows again, so I'll probably buy this when they finally get that part properly engineered.
I'd prefer not to install Windows again, so I'll probably buy this when they finally get that part properly engineered.
Just a thought, but MS have mapped <WinKey><tab> to their new aero application switcher. This will interfere badly with Macs as Parallels have mapped the WinKey to <command>.
I reckon that MS did this deliberately to mess with our heads