Parallels 4.0 - Anyone tried it yet?

Just wondering if anyone has tried it and if there is a significant improvement in performance?

Also can you now play css in parallels as they have added more support for windows 3d games?

Heres the link:
http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

 

It converted my Parallels 3 VM without issue and seems to work right off (more than I could say about the 2.x transition to 3.0).

It boots faster and runs a little faster (not sure if its 50% though)

Its a memory hog compared to 3.0 Enough so I think I'll take a look at Fusion.

P.S. - I tried parallels compressor in 4.0. Its blindingly fast and far more effective than in 3.x. What would typically take a 10gb VM down to just under 8 in about four hours took it down to under 5gb in about an hour. Sweet.

 

I have tried fusion and in my opinion paralells runs alot faster.

 

Can I boot my boot camp partition with parallels 4.0?

 

Both Parallels and Fusion support using your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine. I used XP and I didn't have any activation issues when I tries Parallels or when I use Fusion. Maybe someone could comment with Vista, but I would assume they've figured out how to keep the OS activation issues to a minimum otherwise they've be flooded with complaints.

 

I have the opposite experience. I find fusion runs faster.

 

Me too fusion still works for me the best.

 

Just upgraded mine today... got an error right at the end saying that the process failed, but then the virtal machine started up anyways, with my old XP install, doesn't seem to be any problems, although I didn't really notice any huge speed improvements either.
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One caution about Parallels 4.0. Everything was going very well for quite a while and then I rebooted my Mac. I don't do it very often but I had an update that required rebooting. After the reboot I lost network connectivity on the virtual machine.

I got a "Parallels failed to load the networking module...reset to default in Parallels>Preferences>Networking to fix." Except that does not fix it. Reinstalling Parallels fixes it til the next reboot then it breaks again. Obviously not everyone experiences this. I've seen a few other reports but its not all over the web.

Took me several hours of fiddling to get it fixed and still not sure which thing I tried did it or if it will stay fixed. I'll try it on my iMac on the weekend and that will tell me if I'll be purchasing the upgrade for Parallels or looking at Fusion. Parallels support is abysmal so you pretty much have to figure out things for yourself. Great when stuff works, not very nice when it doesn't.

 

Is Fusion's support better?

 

Fusion > VirtualBox >>> Parallels.

Q.E.D.

 

fusion is made by a larger "we know what we are doing" type of company that does have much better support than parallels. parallels is a company that basically just made parallels. vmware has had a ton of experience making vm's.

i have found vmware 2 to be a lot faster and more stable than parallels 3, but haven't yet tried version 4.

 

I find that Fusion was a little bit more user friendly than parallels but they both ran good for me

 

I have used VMWare for Windows XP and even their Enterprise solutions, and their products line work very well especially in Enterprise environment. When I tried VMWare Fusion on my MBP, they work well so far.

But given their track record, I'd lean towards VMWare than Parallel. They even have a large number of Virtual Machine ready made, available from their website.

 

I've been using Parallels for a few years now (since V1). It was the first VM engine for the Mac and while its support is abysmal, I have had very few problems with it that I could not figure out or live with (more later).

A few months back when my most used machine became a Rev1 Macbook Air (1.6ghz, 2gb ram, 80gb 4200rpm ATA drive), I was worried that running a VM on such a limited machine would be problematic. I was pleasantly surprised when Parallels 3 (with WinXPPro) ran just fine in combination with all my daily MAC applications.

I downloaded Parallels 4 when it became available. It converted my existing VM's fine and ran them even faster than Parallels 3. But its using more resources to do it so I was a bit unhappy about leaving even more limited resources to the Mac side of my machine. With a little fine tuning I got it back down to where Parallels 3 was but at the cost of reducing RAM available to XP from 512 to 384. Given I usually only run Outlook 2003 and IE6, thats ok though for me though.

So, I thought I'd try VMWARE (since I work for its parent company ;-) as people said it was better, faster, etc. My experience in building and running a VM is very different from what some others have said. While I like its interface and simplicity (and no network and printer access quirks that you get with parallels) were appealing, it uses a LOT more memory and CPU and HD than even untuned Parallels 3 or 4. Its also incredibly slow (on my limited machine) compared to Parallels 3 or 4 and impacts my MAC experience much more so than either Parallels.

So for me, I'm going for the Parallels 4 upgrade rather then buying Fusion 2. If I had a much more powerful machine I might choose differently if only for the nicer interface and presumed improvment in support.