Vista in parallels

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Parallels Releases Workstation 2. Parallels Releases Update for Desktop for Mac. In a communication with TMO on Wednesday, Ben Rudolph, the Parallels Marketing Manager pointed out that Microsoft has set some "very specific, and restrictive, guidelines on when and how Vista can be run in a virtual machine.

Parallels Desktop is the 2 selling software for Macs behind Microsoft Office. The crux of the matter is that the least expensive versions of Vista, the Home Basic and Home Premium are not licensed for use in a virtualization environment. You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual or otherwise emulated hardware system on the licensed device.

The combo was reviewed on a unibody MacBook Pro 2. That 4 GB turned out to be especially handy because the review process went on concurrently with normal editing and software tools loaded, such as Vienna RSS , OmniWeb, Path Finder, BBEdit and many other applications used for daily article creation.

Upgrading to Desktop 4 is an easy process. However, because Parallels has changed the file format for virtual machines, Desktop 3 and Desktop 4 cannot coexist on the same computer.

The Desktop 4 installer recognizes that and presents an option to archive the old VMs in case you'd like to move Desktop 3 and its old-format VMs to another Intel Mac. Once the installer upgrades to Desktop 4 and updates the VM file formats, all that's required is to launch it. In Desktop 4, there is a handy splash screen that presents some typical options and helps the user focus on the possible tasks.

One of the strengths of Desktop 4 is the ease with which it handles the installation of Windows. When it's done, Windows, in this case, Vista launches, and one is ready to check for updates. The snapshot didn't take long, perhaps 2 minutes to complete. The very welcome Vista Welcome Center found under the Start button helps the new user get a handle on the customization tasks. For starters, most people would want to change the desktop, set a password for the administrator, and create a new, unprivileged user, and that's what I did.

After that, I tested Internet Explorer 7. Like a good citizen, it asks if you want to make it the default browser. I said no, and went to mozilla. That installation was painless, and a shortcut to Firefox 3. I was pleased with how the two work together and Vista allows the user to easily set a default preference. One of the things that I noticed was that Vista is able to run in its own Leopard "space," full screen, without a problem.

There was plenty of room to go wrong here, and I'm happy to report that nothing did. Step 3? There is no step 3, as Jeff Goldblum would say. I decided that a good initial test would be to combine the installation of some software, Internet access, and a stress test of video streaming, all within the virtualization. So I decided to use the Netflix "Watch Instantly" feature -- which would entail downloading and installing Microsoft's Silverlight. During the download of Silverlight and the install, sometimes new windows would overwrite old windows, and there would be some temporary cosmetic problems.

However, it wasn't as annoying as it could have been.