Parallels on Mac

[jeffrey collins]

Has anyone on here used this program for their mac? My mom just got a mac mini and she still has a bunch of old WIN games she likes to play. I played around with this a bit at the store, but just wanted to get some unbiased opinions.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/TS967LL/A

[floridaorange]

Re: Parallels on Mac

Yah it works pretty seemlessly. It may be a good idea to use firefox on the windows side, some webpages occaisionally do not load on the windows side for me, but overall they do.

[ddr]

Re: Parallels on Mac

if they are games that require Any use of the video card, it would be best to just install Windows on boot camp.

Parallels is nice for those non-video intense applications but other than that... meh.

I use it for my Becker CPA study program, works very nice.

depends on how old windows games she plays, there is a trial version, give that a try before you buy it.

[floridaorange]

Re: Parallels on Mac

If it helps, I also use it for work related programs that require windows xp.

[toasty]

Re: Parallels on Mac

I use it regularly (although I'm using it less and less as Windows is becoming less necessary), and I can tell you that for most applications, it works great. They just released a new version a couple of weeks ago, in fact, that is faster, uses less system resources, and is more tightly integrated with the Mac OS when you run Windows. It's a great solution for people that prefer macs but for whatever reason need to be able to run certain software that is only on Windows.

It is true that things that are really graphic-hardware intensive are going to see a performance drop -- some newer games, in particular, will be effectively unplayable -- but you refer to "older" games, which I doubt will present that problem. I'm not a big computer gamer so I've not tried anything really heavy on there, but it's been able to handle most everything I've thrown at it with very little problem.

[toasty]

Re: Parallels on Mac

Oh, and if you're just thinking about getting it to run Windows occasionally, on an as-needed basis, I definitely recommend running XP SP2 rather than Vista. Vista just drains your resources and doesn't offer anything special if you're only looking to run specific apps. Hell, I'd advocate XP over Vista anyway, but when you're talking about running it in an emulator, running something that requires less resources is the obvious call.

[Leto_Parallels]

Re: Parallels on Mac

Yah, it's good. Go buy it.

Actually, go buy like three copies. You can give the extra two away as presents to family members or homeless people. Even if they don't have Macs, the box is really shiny, so no big deal.

toasty, nice avatar.

jeffrey, if you (or anyone) have questions about specifics, I'll hang out in this thread for a while.

There's a free trial if you want to just try it out for a couple weeks first.

[Jenks]

Re: Parallels on Mac

^lol

i would like to add that i have no reason to have bootcamp or windows on my mac, and i hate them both. gimmie back my hard drive space!

[jeffrey collins]

Re: Parallels on Mac

Thanks everyone. Yeah those games she plays are like Mahjong and those types of games. I just want something with an ease of use that can be good for her as she was freaking out yesterday when I had the dock set to disappear when it wasn't in use and she was freakin out trying to know where it went.

And yeah I'm definitely going to be using XP. Neither me or Mom have used Vista and I don't wanna start now.

[feather]

Re: Parallels on Mac

Hey man, 50% off VMWare Fusion. It does the same thing as Parrallels ie, virtualisation. It supposedly run better than Parrallels if you can believe Lifehacker:

7. VMWare Fusion (Mac virtualization, new)

Last year 'round this time we were gaga for Parallels Desktop, virtualization software that put Windows on the Mac (without having to reboot with Boot Camp.) This year after a few too many Parallels-induced spinning beach balls of death, we're moving over to VMWare's Fusion product. The virtualization company's answer to Parallels is more stable, can import Parallels disk images, and works with crazy configurations like a Vista Boot Camp partition. Lifehacker readers are still on the fence in the tight Mac virtualization race between Parallels and Fusion; they're neck and neck in our recent faceoff.

[toasty]

Re: Parallels on Mac

^^ haven't tried VMWare Fusion, but I can't help but notice that that article is over a year old, and Parallels just came out with a significant upgrade in just the last few weeks. Probably want to make sure you're read a more recent comparison before you pull the trigger on either one.

[beanzncheez]

Re: Parallels on Mac

I haven't used VMWare Fusion for that but I am a strong supporter of VMWare in general. Great stuff!

[feather]

Re: Parallels on Mac

^^ haven't tried VMWare Fusion, but I can't help but notice that that article is over a year old, and Parallels just came out with a significant upgrade in just the last few weeks. Probably want to make sure you're read a more recent comparison before you pull the trigger on either one.

Yeah definitely want to read up a more recent comparison, I saw the 50% offer and thought I'd just mention it since he was talking about purchasing a virtualisation software.

[res0nat0r]

Re: Parallels on Mac

Also Sun has released their version of their VM software called virtualbox. This one is free also.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

[jeffrey collins]

Re: Parallels on Mac

Cool. Thanks bro.