Hands-On Report--Beta Update for Parallels Desktop for Mac--Don't Update Yet

Parallels released a beta update of Parallels Desktop for Mac (PDM), the solution that enables users to run Windows and other OSes at the same time as Mac OS X on any Intel-based Mac without rebooting. The update, which is free for all Parallels Desktop users, includes several important upgrades, including:

• USB improvement, including USB support for Windows Mobile 5 and a much broader list of supported devices.
  
• The Mac hard disk cache can be now switched off for a virtual machine, which can substantially improve OS X performance while using Parallels Desktop.
  
• Improved graphic performance
  
• Complete keyboard support, including the “eject CD” button and right & left shift mapping for non-English layouts
  
• Unicode path support lets users name files and paths in any language
  
• Improved shared folders performance
  
• Minor bug fixes
  

Users can download the beta update of Parallels Desktop for Mac from this Parallels Web page and install it manually. The auto-update and "Check for Updates" in the Help menu do not work with the beta update.

According to Parallels, the final release of the update is expected in the next few weeks. Users who have Parallels Desktop auto-update enabled will receive the final update automatically. Users who do not have auto-update enabled will be able to manually download the update by clicking "Check for Updates" in the "Help" tab of the Parallels menu bar.

We have auto-update enabled in our copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac (v2.1 Build 1848) but it said our copy is up to date when PDM was launched. We tried the manual "Check for Updates" and it also said our copy is up to date, confirming that the beta update needs to be downloaded and manually installed. We downloaded a copy of Build 1862 from Parallels update Web page.

We opened the disk image (.dmg) file and it contained a PDF of the Guide, a Parallels-Desktop.pkg file and an Uninstall file. We noted that the Guide has a more recent date and is slightly larger so we replaced our old Guide PDF. Then, we double-clicked the .pkg file which opened the installer and clicked though it to "Update" and our copy was updated to v2.2 Build 1862 with an August 7, 2006, date.

When we tried to launch Windows XP, we got an error message--"Unable to allocate virtual machine memory!"--and the launch quit. The error message says this error is due to there not being enough disk space but we've got over 20GB and PDM Build 1848 ran fine just before the update to Build 1862. We have filed a bug report with Parallels on the error message. Parallels responded that they are looking at it.

Fortunately, we have no mission critical need to run Windows XP at this time. But we were in the middle of what has been a mostly highly positive review of PDM when we applied the beta update.

We recommend against applying the beta update at this time. [Bill Fox]