Parallels is Excellent

[Jonny M]

Installed the demo of this a couple of weeks or so ago and forgot about it. Finally got round to loading XP Pro onto it tonight on my 1.66 Core Duo Mac Mini / 1GB RAM. I loaded XP Pro onto an external FW drive, cause I thought the speed boost would be a bonus, and because I'm fast running out of space on the internal 60GB.

This thing flies, everything works amazingly well once Parallels Tools is installed. I've just hit buy over at the Apple store to get a version on disc for £50 delivered. Unfortunately it will take a while to ship but I can wait, I have a PC to use in the meantime if I need to (though I haven't powered it up for over two weeks now).

This will mainly be used for the small areas of my degree course where everyone uses the same software. Of course most stuff I can do (better) with Mac alternatives, but when learning new languages it's a lot easier if what you're looking at is the same as what's on the slides.

I was going to hold out for CrossOver to get better, but I figured that there would always be the odd time when I need a full XP environment. And for 20 seconds of time it takes to boot, I don't mind having to load one up.

[awm]

Great, just rub in to those of us who have PPC macs . Glad it works well though so that when I upgrade I can consolidate 1 laptop (Mac) + 1 desktop (XP) = 1 laptop (Mac + XP). Who said math can't be fun (I guess whoever said upgrade=$ spent).

[Jonny M]

Well it shipped today despite having a lead time of 2-3 weeks. Which makes me even happier.

[directhex]

Parallels doesn't do 64-bit

Parallels doesn't go near VMware disk images

Parallels is pretty useless for me

[Jonny M]

And that's what I wanted it for.

[awm]

How does it do with 3D?

[BroadbandPlacey]

have you tried calculating pi to a million yet

[directhex]

How does it do with 3D?

not at all

[awm]

, I remeber hearing some virtulization solution was working on a decent 3D driver... Am I just going crazy(er)?

[directhex]

, I remeber hearing some virtulization solution was working on a decent 3D driver... Am I just going crazy(er)?

there's experimental support in vmware 5.5 (only 2k or XP guests, no T&L)

[awm]

Hopefully something will become of the 3D support since with Vista around the corner we'll need decent 3D preformance (not to mention all the software that uses GPUs out there).