12.29.06
Parallels Beta 3 Build 3106
Parallels released a new version of their beta product today. After having just upgraded a few days ago, I was curious what had changed. On the surface I don’t notice much at all, but a couple small changes make a pretty big difference. When you go into Coherence Mode, windows with rounded corners no long “leak” a bit of the Windows desktop through on the overlay. This means the apps look even more integrated into the Mac desktop than they did before. Great work. Another small change I noticed is the inclusion of Transporter Beta3 into the mix. This tool allows you to virtualize a live PC into a virtual machine. This is a fairly large step for Parallels, and I like the results. I’m really starting to look forward to the final version of this software, and it continues to run admirably for my uses, even in beta.
VMware Fusion has been running for me well, but it has a lot of catching up to do if they want to compete with Parallels in the Mac market. It performs adequately, but it lacks several of the features that Parallels has caused me to come to expect in a Mac virtual environment. These features include Coherence mode and the ability to use a Boot Camp volume as the hdd in a virtual machine. Vmware Fusion looks promising, especially since the final version will be able to use virtually any virtual machine from other platforms. For now though, Parallels is far ahead in terms of usability and performance.