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Parallels Release Candidate 2 (Build 3150) Released

Colonel

By Colonel

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Today, the popular virtualization software Parallels hit its Release Candidate 2 Milestone. RC2 contains a ton of long-awaited features, such as the ability to burn CDs and DVDs (from inside Parallels) and “Drag and Drop” support. Parallels gives us an idea of what the newest build contains.

NEW!
USB 2.0 support - “Plug and play” popular USB devices like external hard drives, printers, scanners and web cameras including iSight at full native speed.
NEW!
Full-feature virtual CD/DVD drive - Burn CDs and DVDs directly in virtual machines, and play any copy-protected CD or DVD just like you would on a real PC
NEW!
Coherence - The groundbreaking feature that lets you run Windows applications without seeing Windows just got better!
NEW!
Better Boot Camp support - Using your Boot Camp partition in Parallels Desktop is now easier than ever. RC2’s Boot Camp support includes:

Full support for FAT32 and NTFS partitions

Easy offline configuration. Simply tell Parallels Desktop that you want to create a virtual machine from a Boot Camp Partition and click start. No complicated set up required!

No need to re-activate Windows each time you switch between Boot Camp and Parallels. Activate Windows only once inside Parallels and work in both environments
NEW!
For advanced users: configurating the layout of Boot Camp partitions by manual editing of Virtual Machine's .pvs configuration file.

IMPORTANT! It is not possible to suspend a Virtual Machine that is connected to Boot Camp as it could result in an unstable system.

VERY IMPORTANT! Beta1 (build 3036) users must boot natively into Boot Camp and uninstall Parallels Tools for Boot Camp prior to running it in RC2 (build 3150).
NEW!
Transporter RC2 bundled - migrate your real Windows PC, or existing VMware or Virtual PC VMs to Parallels virtual machines!

IMPORTANT! Previous Beta users MUST upgrade their Transporter package on their Windows source machine before using Transporter in RC2. Failing to do so may result in a system crash and loss of data
NEW!
Added keyboard remapping configuration

New Look and Feel - completely redesigned windows and easier to follow dialogues to make Desktop for Mac more user-friendly than ever
NEW!
True “Drag and Drop” functionality - a long awaited feature that lets you seamlessly drag and drop files and folders from Windows to Mac OS X and vice versa. Parallels Desktop now shares the entire Mac file structure between OS X and Windows - no more worrying about which copy of the file is the most recently updated!Read/Write Boot Camp partition - use your Apple Boot Camp Partition as a virtual HDD for Parallels Desktop for Mac Virtual Machine Catalogue - now all of your virtual machines are available through a centralized VM catalogue which appears on each Parallels Desktop for Mac instance One-click Virtual Machine Aliases - automatically create a desktop shortcut for your virtual machine with the OS Installation Assistant, by dragging-and-dropping from title bar, or by pressing Command-Option keys combination. Clicking on Alias automatically starts the Virtual Machine Resizable Main Window - resize the Parallels Desktop for Mac main window as you do with any other Mac application Auto-Adjusting Screen Resolution - Windows auto-adjusts its screen resolution to the actual main window size Improved graphic performance - up to 50% faster! Connect/disconnect USB devices schema improved - no more annoying “wait 5-10 seconds” message on USB device connecting to Parallels Desktop for Mac! Up to 5 Virtual NICs - now each Virtual Machine can have up to five virtual network interfaces Enhanced Shared Networking Mode - run Cisco VPN and many other complex networking applications in conjunction with Connection Sharing Mode
NEW!
Lots of various fixes

Still no full DirectX support, so gamers will have to reboot into Windows to for their fragging fix. The Release Candidate can be downloaded from Parallels’ beta testing page and more information can be found in the Parallels forum.
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Swad

There aren't too many companies that I love, but this is one of them. Props to the Parallels team for being so attentive to user needs. Bravo!

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erbic

Works great with my old Vista RTM VM. Very fast, good network connectivity and full USB printing support. :wallbash: The new Tools also seems to have fixed the issue where it would never correct the resolution when resuming a suspended VM in full-screen mode.

 

BUT.... Still can't boot my Boot Camp Vista install, even by editing the .pvs file manually. (Although it is Home Premium, so that could be why...)

 

And this update seems to have broken my Parallels Shared Folders. That could just be a Vista issue, though.

Edited by ErBiC
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grrifiedducky

Now my question, with this improved networking support, will it matter if osx does not support an individual network card, because windows will recognize it and can share it with osx?

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tomozj
Now my question, with this improved networking support, will it matter if osx does not support an individual network card, because windows will recognize it and can share it with osx?

 

I think what it does, is add the VM as a new computer onto a network. If you let the VM use the network card, and use internet connection sharing or something, maybe with the right setup you could pull it off. This is only what I think is right... I think it is though... if not someone correct me :thumbsup_anim:

 

-tj

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Takuro

I've been using this for almost a week now, and one major problem I've noticed in this build happens when going full-screen. When you try to exit full-screen mode, your mouse is freed, but you never actually switch back to your desktop. You have to manually shut it down to exit Parallels.

 

I guess performance-wise, my Pentium 4 just doesn't cut it. This CPU wasn't built for virtualization. Unless I run Windows in windowed mode at about 800x600, it's unbearably slow.

 

Does anybody have an actual list of improvements in this build? With every release, they've been tending to throw in updates from older builds (eg: coherence has been around for months) and mark them off as "new" features. What's actually changed?

Edited by Takuro
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Synaesthesia

Really like Parallels (using the previous beta version though).

 

Hey Takuro I find performance to be pretty good on my pc, which seems very much the same as yours. I don't think it matters that I have 2gb of RAM, I set my VM to 512 mb of ram, although I could use less even.

 

What does help is that I use a version of XP called tinyxp rev 05, which is very lightweight, it's been slimmed down to the max with nLite. Parallels boots quickly and my system stays very responsive, even though my cpu is only single core and doesn't support VT.

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errandwolfe
I guess performance-wise, my Pentium 4 just doesn't cut it. This CPU wasn't built for virtualization. Unless I run Windows in windowed mode at about 800x600, it's unbearably slow.

Takuro,

What P4 do you have? I have to tell you with my intel system (specs in sig) not only am I able to run XP full screen on my secondary display at near native speed, but I can also run all my standard OS X apps at the same time. While running Parallels/XP I can still run Firefox, iTunes, Calendar, Azareus, Adium, and even play World of Warcraft with no slow down.

The key to running Parallels well is memory. The more of it you have the better it runs. I found my price/performance balance is near perfect at 3 Gb of RAM. My WinXP has 640 Mb assigned to it with the rest going to OS X.

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EPDM

USB doesn't work at all.

 

Coherence works better.

Sound depending on which install you original updated from.

Nah... this is getting worse.

 

It's like OSX86 itself. They keep adding stuff and breaking others at the same time. I think I'll revert back to V1848 (the first stable V1). That had everything working.

 

And it didn't have this buffer problem where after you quit Parallels all of a sudden numerous windows appear doing stuff that you didn't even clicked on.

 

Don't like it.

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MacMoof

I'm using this build after having been quite happy with the previous beta.

 

Only reason I even bothered to upgrade was because this most recent build supports disc burning, and I needed to burn some .cdi files in Disk Juggler.

 

3.06 P4 w/ HT, 1GB RAM and I have to say it runs XP sp2 just fine.. as well as it ever ran on any 'straight PC' i've ever run XP on.. maybe even a tad bit better.

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me@home

have it installed on my AMD and still working fine...I use it on my hackintosh PC with Encarta...what I like in Coherence mode...yeah great work !

 

USB 2.0 seems to be slow...like on 3150...hope will get better...

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