Brief Hands-On Report--Parallels released Desktop for Mac 2.5 Build 3094 Beta 2

Parallels released the second beta of version 2.5 of its Desktop for Mac (DfM), a way to run other OS's in a window in Mac OS X, much like but much better than the defunct Virtual PC software. It is available for download via MacUpdate.com. Note that Build 3094 is a beta. The current stable release is version 2.0 Build 1970.

Parallels lists these improvements for DfM Build 3094:

• USB 2.0 support - "Plug and play" popular USB devices like external hard drives, printers, and scanners, and use them at full native speed.
  
• Current Build 3094 doesn't support isochronous devices such as web cameras, microphones, etc.
  
• 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
  
• Improved Coherence mode - The ground-breaking feature that lets you run Windows applications without seeing Windows just got better! Now you can:
  
  • Place Windows applications on your Mac desktop or in your application dock. Just click to launch them directly from OS X!
    
  • Use Command+tab to cycle through Windows and Mac applications simultaneously, and "hide and show" Windows applications just like you would with Mac applications
    
  • View the Windows Command Console in Coherence mode
    
  • Use Coherence in Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP and Windows Vista!
    
• Better Boot Camp support - Using your Boot Camp partition in Parallels Desktop is now easier than ever. Beta2'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

We previously reported on DfM beta 1 of version 2.5 (Build 3036) and that is the version that we had installed and it was working very well. We have Windows XP-SP2 and Windows Vista RC1 virtual machines. First, we installed Build 3094 over Build 3036 as an upgrade. This was a mistake. Our monitor's video went wonky on our XP-SP2 virtual machine with a full screen slide, not just in the Parallels window but our entire monitor, from left to right whenever we shut down XP-SP2. The Vista RC1 virtual machine fared worse in that we could not install the new Parallels Tools. Vista just hung.

We uninstalled Parallels DfM and reinstalled Dfm Build 3094. This time we were able to install the new version of Parallels Tools in Vista just fine but the wonky video now happens with Vista as well as XP-SP2.

We updated both OSs, 21 updates for XP-SP2 and 1 for Vista RC1 We also updated Firefox, Thunderbird and Adobe Reader. Then we were able to download and install the Office 2007 for Windows trial in XP-SP2. The latter will allow us to make documents in the new default XML format to check converters for the Mac version of Office 2004 and v.X. All went off without a hitch.

We worked for awhile to see a USB 2.0 hard drive attached to our MacBook Pro to no avail with XP-SP2 or Vista RC1. We downloaded and installed iTunes 7.0.2 in XP-SP2 to see if it would see our iPod with video attached but it did not. However, if we clicked the USB icon in the lower right corner of DfM, the list of USB devices included the hard drive and iPod. If selected, the device was ejected. Apparently, we have some more learning to do to use the new USB 2.0 capability in DfM.

As a side note, neither virtual machine can find our HP Laserjet 3030 multifunction machine attached by USB to our AirPort Extreme Base Station. Vista RC1 found our HP Color Laserjet 2605n connected directly to our network but XP-SP2 did not. Thankfully, we use Macs and Mac OS X that instantly find both printers using Bonjour technology.

That's enough Windows frustration for one day. [Bill Fox]