Parallels Desktop 3036 beta build out

Parallels have released a beta build of their excellent virtual machine for the Mac and it’s loaded with cool new features. Once out of beta it will be a free upgrade to existing owners.

The feature list runs something like this:

  • Drag & drop files between Finder & Explorer for copying
  • Boot from the Boot Camp partition (will require another activation and you loose suspend VM)
  • Read/Write to the Boot Camp partition (NTFS or FAT)
  • Use Mac clipboard cut/copy/paste short cuts in Windows (opt XCV)
  • Graphics performance increases of up to 50%
  • Windows auto resizes to Mac window size (about time)
  • Coherence mode puts Windows application on the Mac desktop & DockBar instead of in the VM window
  • Transporter lets you convert VMware and VirtualPC images to Parallels Desktop
  • UI has been revised & polished throughout to be more Mac-like

It’s not all perfect though – some people have been reporting problems with Mac Pro systems and video driver support so waiting for a few days might be a good idea but it’s great progress.

Microsoft have a number of VirtualPC images available including the Visual Studio Orcas preview and the Internet Explorer 6 test platform. With Transporter you should just be able to convert them and get going although I would imagine the copy of XP will balk and require re-activation :(

Now we just need vitalized multi-processors, 64-bit support and hardware accelerated 3D ;-)

Parallels has gained support for hardware accelerated 3D and VMware support for multiple cores/processors since this post was published.

[)amien

2 responses

  1. Avatar for steve

    I tell you, when you showed me Parallels I couldn't get over how freaking cool it was. If they add hardware accelerated 3D, I'm sold :)

    steve 3 December 2006
  2. Avatar for k.pushparaj

    i want free ntfs to fat file convert
    and 80 gb about partition and format
    utility. windows are dos based

    k.pushparaj 29 January 2007