Brief Hands-On Report--Parallels released Desktop for Mac 2.5 Beta 4 (Build 3120)

Parallels released Beta 4 (Build 3120) of it's 2.5 version of Desktop for Mac. It is available for download via MacUpdate.com. The improvements listed for this update are the same as those listed for Beta 2 (Build 3094).

After downloading Beta 4, we uninstalled Beta 3 (Build 3106) and then installed Beta 4. Doing this had eliminated problems we had previously encountered by just installing over the previous version. Our Windows XP virtual machine started fine and we updated the Parallels Tools with no problem.

Unfortunately, our Windows Vista RC1 virtual machine failed to boot, hanging part way during startup. We restarted in safe mode and it hung again after loading many drivers. We uninstalled Beta 4 and reinstalled Beta 3 but we still had the same problem. Either our virtual machine is damaged or perhaps RC1 has expired. Our backup copy of the Vista RC1 virtual machine is not with us at Macworld.

Windows XP works great in Beta 4. Coherence mode works very well as does the automatic resizing of virtual machine's window. [Bill Fox]