Parallels 3 is coming

I looked, and I haven't seen any threads about the new Parallels that's coming out in a bit. (With cheaper pre-orders until tomorrow). Is anyone excited? It looks like they've got pretty decent directx support, vm snapshots finally, and some neat thingy that's meant to work with coherence that associates filetypes with Windows programs.

look at the blog's youtube video of quake4: http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/

 

I've pre-ordered. I'd love it for parallels to have any type of hardware graphics acceleration - would eliminiate the CPU spikes I get when running it.
However, VMWare Fusion is also going to come out soon. I wonder which will be the better of the two.

 

Where can you pre-order it....do they give you an expected date?

 

thanks for the info! I love parallels and directx support is (y)

 

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/upgrade

 

Can anyone speculate on a release date...i think the quote from the website was a couple of weeks but do you think it will be sooner rather than later?...within the next 30 days maybe?

 

It was released today apparently.

 

I cant wait to read a review...i hope the 3D acceleration is up to par and not affected in any way...

 

Frankly I think any kind of 3d acceleration within the VM is pretty remarkable.

Here's a youtube video of someone playing quake 4 with Parallels 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWU4DTOP9ys

 

Can parallels 3 support any and every Windows game... it should in theory right?

Also, the vid looked alittle laggy, wonder what kind of system he was running quake 4 on?

 

No idea, doesn't say in the description. And that's with a beta version I think.

I don't know about any and every game; I would imagine that the quirks of virtualization might cause problems in at least some games.

I think any way you slice it Boot Camp is still the way to go, but the fact that they have any kind of 3d acceleration working with Parallels is pretty incredible to me.

 

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/

BootCamp 1.3 was also released today. Coincidence?

 

Good question; I wonder how closely Apple and Parallels work together. I know Apple pushes it pretty heavily now in the Apple Store, etc. and I think they advertise the use of Parallels on the website as well as part of the way to run Windows on a Mac.

 

I can't wait to see it benched with 3dmark!

 

On a somewhat related note... How well do bootcamp and parallels work together? By that I mean using the bootcamp windows install from OSX

 

Very well, Parallels has support to use your Boot Camp partition if you like.

 

Anyone using Parallels 3 yet? Can you tell us what you think and maybe give some in game benchmarks...

 

I was so excited about Paralles 3 until i read that it only supports up to dx8.1 ....crap....can anyone confirm this?

 

Pretty sure it's 9.0c; that's what people got when running the directx test stuff.

 

I tried out the demo yesterday. I was a little disappointed because it doesn't support Vista Aero theme, yet. Furthermore, not all games are supported; there's a list of supported games on Parallel's website. For a quick demo on gaming performance, I installed Plasma Pong. My Macbook's graphics card is more than capable of playing Plasma Pong, but under Parallels virtualization, the game was very laggy. Plasma Pong was smooth when I played it under BootCamp though.

 

If i want to try out the demo do i need a copy of windows vista?

 

Yeah, the trial is for the Parallels virtualization software; it doesn't come with a full Vista OS to use or something.

You could of course install Vista without activating it though, which I think you can use for 30 days or something.

 

I just played Counter Strike on my Macbook without bootcamping. I'm happy.

 

So, Parallels 3.0 not running Aero has been verified?

 

Parallels still lists it as "coming soon" on their site.

 

Btw, VMware Fusion Beta 4 (with Unity, their response to "Coherence" mode in Parallels) is now out:

http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/

 

the original CS or CS:S?

 

Probably CS 1.6. Source can barely run in native mode, let alone in Parallels.

 

What do you mean, you're saying a new MBP with 8600M GT couldn't run CS: Source in native mode when booted into Windows? That doesn't make much sense. Didn't someone just do a benchmark getting like 112fps at max settings or something?

 

That guy has a Macbook, not a Macbook Pro.

 

Oh, duh....

 

Are there any reviews out on parallels 3, if not can anyone here write a review for us... thanks

 

I've been using Parallels 3 for a little bit now. I haven't used it too heavily, but I will mention this: the DirectX support is much weaker than their download page suggests; it's modified Wine code (the Linux stuff, yeah), a partial implementation of DX 8.1, and only is guaranteed to work on the games they list. Mostly, it sounds like it doesn't work too well on any games not listed. I've managed to get FFXI running (barely) on my Macbook. I'll try some other games when I get around to it.

Other than the disappointing DX support, it's working well for me, though I haven't actually tried any of their other new features yet, either. (sorry ^^; )

 

I've only downloaded and installed Parallels 3.0 earlier today. So far I see no compelling reason for the upgrade, and I have video issues with it on my Macbook that prevents me from using the supposedly improved convergence capabilities.

I've got in a support request and so far I am wholly unimpressed.

 

Yeah, that's one thing that has be thinking about whether I want to buy Parallels or not. Seems almost universally that Parallels customers complain that the support isn't just bad, but non-existent (i.e. no replies to support requests, etc.).

Especially with VMware Fusion now being available for preorder for only $40, and having an $80 price when it will be released, it could be a pretty compelling alternative.