News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

December 1, 2006

software

Parallels Beta released quietly, but with loads of new features

Posted Dec. 1, ’06, 12:18 PM PT by Aaron Freedman
Category | Software

Parallels-1 The program many of us have come to know and love, Parallels Desktop, has now quietly announced a very feature loaded beta of their software. So feature loaded, in fact, that I can’t even fit all of it’s great features into a sentence. So instead, here’s a list:

Totally new and redesigned interface
Boot from a Boot Camp partition
Read/Write a Boot Camp partition
Make Windows applications in a VM appear like Mac ones via Coherency
Convert Windows installations and VMWare VMs into Parallels VMs with Parallels Transporter
Drag-and-drop filesharing between OS X without the need for shared folders

This is just a selection of some of the big features in this new Parallels Beta (for a more detailed list, see the release post in the Parallels Forums). While I have installed the new beta, I haven’t been able to try out many of the new features, as I immediately took advantage of a smaller added feature, Express Windows install from an ISO image, to install Vista. The Boot Camp feature is something I’ve wanted since the initial beta of Parallels, and I plan to try out how it works with a Boot Camp installation of Vista. I’ll also see how Parallels Transporter, Coherency, and drag-and-drop file sharing works. But in the mean time, you should go and download this new beta for yourself.

[hat tip: Jason Snell]


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