FYI: if you have a .edu e-mail address, you might qualify for Microsoft's $30 Windows 7 Professional retail upgrade, rather than having to pay the normal retail price of $200. Be sure to tell Microsoft you have special communications needs at your institution. Otherwise you'll only get the Home Premium upgrade for that same $30.
If they put you through the hell that the Vista upgrades made you go through, then you're better off just getting a full version of any flavor. MS used to allow you to simply authenticate your old CD's in XP and prior. In Vista they actually forced you to install your previous version so that you could then upgrade it or install your upgrade on a separate partition. In all cases, it required you to have a valid install already.
If they put you through the hell that the Vista upgrades made you go through, then you're better off just getting a full version of any flavor.
Hours wasted just to do a fresh install.
Simple instructions for clean installing Windows 7 from the retail upgrade discs are widely available on the web, and the educational discount gets you the retail upgrade. If you want a disc mailed to you, pay $15 more ($45 total). In my opinion, the little effort required to go this route is worth it, to avoid rewarding Microsoft for "Vista SP3".
Simple instructions for clean installing Windows 7 from the retail upgrade discs are widely available on the web, and the educational discount gets you the retail upgrade. If you want a disc mailed to you, pay $15 more ($45 total). In my opinion, the little effort required to go this route is worth it, to avoid rewarding Microsoft for "Vista SP3".
I'm not saying you couldn't do a clean install. You could simply by installing on a separate partition from your existing install. I'm saying the product forced you to install Vista, or some other qualifying product first before you could then use your 'upgrade' disk.
If you're doing compute intensive tasks...seriously...just dual boot into windows...c'mon peeps.
I *think* the point is that we're interested in whether Parallels 5 might serve to reduced the number of times we need to reboot for compute intensive tasks that required Windows...
Also VMWare is hugely overpriced for what it is so maybe we can get some better competition now. A lot of us were just stung recently, having to pay for yet another VMWare upgrade even though many users only just bought the previous version. I haven't been able to make myself buy it (again) yet, so this is perfect timing to entice a few people to switch back to Parallels.
VMWare Fusion is the same or nearly the same price as Parallels, and has been pretty much since it was introduced...
You don't *have* to upgrade the instant it comes out - as proven by your later upgrade to the previous Fusion. Fusion 2 had been out for awhile, about as long as Parallels 4 had been before this upgrade...
Do you mean your elation over buying Fusion at half price only lasted until the upgrade arrived and you wound up effectively paying full price?
No I mean I bought it at full price, got one free point upgrade and now have to buy it at full price again all within a single 12 month period. I'm not the only one upset at that either.
I use it at work, so I don't *have* to buy it at all, but I choose to so as to be on the right side of the moral issue. I know of quite a few people where I work that are ticked off and basically are just going to wait for the "free" copy that work provides for that reason. I'm still trying to decide if running Windows XP twice a year is worth yet another 70/80 bucks to me.
You may want to add your complaints to the official forum threads. They are exactly the same as yours.
Way to go Parallels, and welcome back!
Did so, and got a quick response back that fixed it. Simply set your VM to use a single CPU, relaunch, install Parallels Tools, then set back to multiple CPUs if necessary. I can attest (based on very short usage) that it is indeed substantially faster.
The latest version of Parallels Desktop features more than 70 new features, including a new "Crystal view" mode, which can make Windows completely disappear.
Been running it for a few hours now with XP Pro, Vista and 7. THis on a Mac Pro 8 Core with 6 GIGs of RAM and many TBs of disks. I have GT 8800 512 MB Vid card. I am sad to say the graphics claims so far seem very exaggerated in my early experiments. Just for a intensive test I tried Second Life and in all cases it ran but barely. Crystal Mode is fun but in that the mode Second Life told my my graphics card was not able to run it.
Seven times better graphics performance for games and 3D applications than the previous version with Direct X 9Ex with Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1 support.
7 times seems like the kind of marketing talk where one aspect of 3D support is 7 times faster. I doubt for example that the frame rate goes up by a factor of 7.
Forget the speed. If parallels 5 did just two things I'd be ecstatic:
1) Linux (Suse 10.3 in my case) has a nasty habit of locking up if you let the VM sit idle for a while. Incredibly frustrating.
2) The prl_cc (virtual memory monitor) gets into some terrible mode now and then where the system (both Mac and PC) *crawl*. Hopefully, this is part of the "300% speedup" they're talking about (though it would take a 30,000% speed up to make this problem go away).
I use Parallels all the time. But the Linux issue is almost a non-starter for me. I often wait until I get home so I can run my Linux stuff on a separate box to avoid this problem and use Parallels just for quick "in and out of Linux" stuff.
I'm slightly put off by Parallel's continuing claim of full Snow Leopard support and finding stuff like:
(9. Known Issues (build 5.0.9220) :
- Inverted sharing (opening Windows files in Mac applications) does not work on Snow
Leopard host computers booted in 64-bit kernel mode.
- Apple Remote does not work exclusively within the virtual machine on Mac OS X 10.6
and 10.6.1 (Snow Leopard). To solve this issue, upgrade your system to Mac OS X
10.6.2 or later.
- Shared folders do not work in 64-bit Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server virtual machines.
In 32-bit Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server virtual machines, shared folders work fine.
--
I can forgive the middle one, VMWare Fusion 3 appears to tell a better story (other than claims of performance). Well, at least it beats VirtualBox (sorry Sun). Yes, someone would want to do 64 bit development on the same Mac they run a virtual machine on. Of course, by this time next year all of this will be ubiquitous (maybe VirtualBox will lag - sorry Sun).
Are you seriously telling me that not a single reviewer was given a copy of this before hand, and not a single beta tester reviewed this product? If it was breaking news, then why 2 pages of Ads?
And just how long do you think it would be kept secret, or worse, the competition made apprised ware of it?
Comments
FYI: if you have a .edu e-mail address, you might qualify for Microsoft's $30 Windows 7 Professional retail upgrade, rather than having to pay the normal retail price of $200. Be sure to tell Microsoft you have special communications needs at your institution. Otherwise you'll only get the Home Premium upgrade for that same $30.
If they put you through the hell that the Vista upgrades made you go through, then you're better off just getting a full version of any flavor. MS used to allow you to simply authenticate your old CD's in XP and prior. In Vista they actually forced you to install your previous version so that you could then upgrade it or install your upgrade on a separate partition. In all cases, it required you to have a valid install already.
Hours wasted just to do a fresh install.
A lot of us were just stung recently, having to pay for yet another VMWare upgrade even though many users only just bought the previous version.
Do you mean your elation over buying Fusion at half price only lasted until the upgrade arrived and you wound up effectively paying full price?
If they put you through the hell that the Vista upgrades made you go through, then you're better off just getting a full version of any flavor.
Hours wasted just to do a fresh install.
Simple instructions for clean installing Windows 7 from the retail upgrade discs are widely available on the web, and the educational discount gets you the retail upgrade. If you want a disc mailed to you, pay $15 more ($45 total). In my opinion, the little effort required to go this route is worth it, to avoid rewarding Microsoft for "Vista SP3".
Simple instructions for clean installing Windows 7 from the retail upgrade discs are widely available on the web, and the educational discount gets you the retail upgrade. If you want a disc mailed to you, pay $15 more ($45 total). In my opinion, the little effort required to go this route is worth it, to avoid rewarding Microsoft for "Vista SP3".
I'm not saying you couldn't do a clean install. You could simply by installing on a separate partition from your existing install. I'm saying the product forced you to install Vista, or some other qualifying product first before you could then use your 'upgrade' disk.
Is that still the case with W7?
If you're doing compute intensive tasks...seriously...just dual boot into windows...c'mon peeps.
I *think* the point is that we're interested in whether Parallels 5 might serve to reduced the number of times we need to reboot for compute intensive tasks that required Windows...
Also VMWare is hugely overpriced for what it is so maybe we can get some better competition now. A lot of us were just stung recently, having to pay for yet another VMWare upgrade even though many users only just bought the previous version. I haven't been able to make myself buy it (again) yet, so this is perfect timing to entice a few people to switch back to Parallels.
VMWare Fusion is the same or nearly the same price as Parallels, and has been pretty much since it was introduced...
You don't *have* to upgrade the instant it comes out - as proven by your later upgrade to the previous Fusion. Fusion 2 had been out for awhile, about as long as Parallels 4 had been before this upgrade...
Do you mean your elation over buying Fusion at half price only lasted until the upgrade arrived and you wound up effectively paying full price?
No I mean I bought it at full price, got one free point upgrade and now have to buy it at full price again all within a single 12 month period. I'm not the only one upset at that either.
I use it at work, so I don't *have* to buy it at all, but I choose to so as to be on the right side of the moral issue. I know of quite a few people where I work that are ticked off and basically are just going to wait for the "free" copy that work provides for that reason. I'm still trying to decide if running Windows XP twice a year is worth yet another 70/80 bucks to me.
Especially one that pits Virtual Box 3.08 (which I understand is free), against both Parallels 5 and vmware Fusion 3.
As were getting a new i7 i mac, I'd like to see support for eight cores (the i7 has 4 real cores and 4 hiperthread "cores").
Also just how easy is each to use.
Who in the Mac world usually has the best reviews, and not just "everything great" fluff with anything that pays for ads?
Fun stuff, anyway.
No I mean I bought it at full price, got one free point upgrade and now have to buy it at full price again all within a single 12 month period.
How is that? The Fusion 2.x to 3.0 upgrade costs $40 ($10 less than the Parallels upgrade by the way), which is half the price of a new license.
Just installed 5 on my up to date snow leopard mac pro and all three of my vm's are now BSOD.
You may want to add your complaints to the official forum threads. They are exactly the same as yours.
Way to go Parallels, and welcome back!
You may want to add your complaints to the official forum threads. They are exactly the same as yours.
Way to go Parallels, and welcome back!
Did so, and got a quick response back that fixed it. Simply set your VM to use a single CPU, relaunch, install Parallels Tools, then set back to multiple CPUs if necessary. I can attest (based on very short usage) that it is indeed substantially faster.
The latest version of Parallels Desktop features more than 70 new features, including a new "Crystal view" mode, which can make Windows completely disappear.
Huh??? If it can really do this, I'm SOLD!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ7cHhzcdNY
Seven times better graphics performance for games and 3D applications than the previous version with Direct X 9Ex with Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1 support.
7 times seems like the kind of marketing talk where one aspect of 3D support is 7 times faster. I doubt for example that the frame rate goes up by a factor of 7.
1) Linux (Suse 10.3 in my case) has a nasty habit of locking up if you let the VM sit idle for a while. Incredibly frustrating.
2) The prl_cc (virtual memory monitor) gets into some terrible mode now and then where the system (both Mac and PC) *crawl*. Hopefully, this is part of the "300% speedup" they're talking about (though it would take a 30,000% speed up to make this problem go away).
I use Parallels all the time. But the Linux issue is almost a non-starter for me. I often wait until I get home so I can run my Linux stuff on a separate box to avoid this problem and use Parallels just for quick "in and out of Linux" stuff.
(9. Known Issues (build 5.0.9220) :
- Inverted sharing (opening Windows files in Mac applications) does not work on Snow
Leopard host computers booted in 64-bit kernel mode.
- Apple Remote does not work exclusively within the virtual machine on Mac OS X 10.6
and 10.6.1 (Snow Leopard). To solve this issue, upgrade your system to Mac OS X
10.6.2 or later.
- Shared folders do not work in 64-bit Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server virtual machines.
In 32-bit Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server virtual machines, shared folders work fine.
--
I can forgive the middle one, VMWare Fusion 3 appears to tell a better story (other than claims of performance). Well, at least it beats VirtualBox (sorry Sun). Yes, someone would want to do 64 bit development on the same Mac they run a virtual machine on. Of course, by this time next year all of this will be ubiquitous (maybe VirtualBox will lag - sorry Sun).
Are you seriously telling me that not a single reviewer was given a copy of this before hand, and not a single beta tester reviewed this product? If it was breaking news, then why 2 pages of Ads?
And just how long do you think it would be kept secret, or worse, the competition made apprised ware of it?