Mac
Parallels Desktop 5 improves performance, adds features
By Peter CohenNovember 5, 2009, 1:48 pm PT
Parallels has announced the release of Parallels Desktop 5, a new version of their virtualization software that lets Intel Macs run Windows and other operating systems besides Mac OS X without having to reboot. It costs $79.99, though upgrades for existing users cost $49.99.
Parallels counts more than 70 new features in the new release. Highlights of Parallels Desktop 5 include full support for Aero, the user interface in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Parallels also claims up to 7x faster graphics performance with support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9 Ex with Shader Model 3.
Up to 8 virtual CPUs can now be supported in Parallels Desktop, which now supports Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” and 64-bit versions of Windows. Trackpad gestures are now supported, and Windows apps can be spread across multiple displays. The size of “virtual machines” managed using Parallels Compressor is now automatically optimized, and KVM “paravirtualization” is used to improve performance when running Linux as a guest operating system.
Users who bought the 4.0 version on or after October 1, 2009 can upgrade to version 5.0 for free. A free trial version is available for download.
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Parallels Desktop 5 improves performance, adds features
By Peter CohenNovember 5, 2009, 1:48 pm PT
Parallels has announced the release of Parallels Desktop 5, a new version of their virtualization software that lets Intel Macs run Windows and other operating systems besides Mac OS X without having to reboot. It costs $79.99, though upgrades for existing users cost $49.99.
Parallels counts more than 70 new features in the new release. Highlights of Parallels Desktop 5 include full support for Aero, the user interface in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Parallels also claims up to 7x faster graphics performance with support for OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9 Ex with Shader Model 3.
Up to 8 virtual CPUs can now be supported in Parallels Desktop, which now supports Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” and 64-bit versions of Windows. Trackpad gestures are now supported, and Windows apps can be spread across multiple displays. The size of “virtual machines” managed using Parallels Compressor is now automatically optimized, and KVM “paravirtualization” is used to improve performance when running Linux as a guest operating system.
Users who bought the 4.0 version on or after October 1, 2009 can upgrade to version 5.0 for free. A free trial version is available for download.
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Discussion 3 comments so far
3 Responses to “Parallels Desktop 5 improves performance, adds features”
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Yeah, we bought 5 copies September 10. Kinda miffed at Parallels at the moment. They gave no warning about a new version coming out and we needed to buy v4 to be compatible with Snow Leopard. Heck, we don’t even have all of our copies installed yet and they are already outdated.
They did contact me via twitter with a link stating that we could get a “special upgrade price”, but we haven’t heard back on how much that will run.
If we can’t get a good deal, we’ll probably move to VMWare fusion (which I prefer anyway) on our next upgrade and skip P5 altogether.
Wow, that really sucks. Let me know how it turns out.
They have offered us a $9.95 upgrade …although we are running into trouble even getting it because a couple of them are registered under different accounts. Their online chat support keeps glitching out every time we try to contact someone. We’ve sent in an email support ticket as well.
The thing is, they have a 90-day money back guarantee, and at least one person in their forums claimed to get the updates for free when they tried to return the software. If they turn us down for the free upgrade (after going through all this trouble) we WILL be returning the software and going with VMWare Fusion. Since we are edu, we can actually get full versions of Fusion for less than the upgrade price that we paid for Parallels v4.