Parallels Desktop 4.0 Released
No one in the mac community should require an introduction for Parallels Desktop. One of the first virtualisation applications for the Mac, which let’s you run Windows or Linux right besides your Mac applications, has turned to version 4.
The new release brings with it a lot of performance improvements, upto 50% faster says the Parallels press release. They’ve improved memory support, now going upto 8GB, added support for 10.5 Leopard as a guest OS, as well as ‘limited support’ for 10.6 Snow Leopard.
On the graphics side, the new version “introduces support for DirectX 9.0, DirectX Pixel Shader 2.0 and OpenGL 2.0, providing fast video performance, while the Adaptive Hypervisor dynamically allocates resources to meet user needs. The responsiveness to all applications is further enhanced as the virtualization engine has been optimized to consume 15-30% less resources than previous versions.”
With more than 50 new features, additional highlights include a redesigned user interface with quick access to all VMs, additional Screenview modes, Clips for screenshots, Speech Recognition, Security Manager, Safe Mode, Shut Down Mode and Over 45 Supported Guest OSs. Check out the What’s New page.
While all this is well and good, we’ll definitely be taking up Parallels for their word. Rest assured we’ll be coming up with a detailed review of Parallels Desktop 4.0. The full version costs $79, while an upgrade for previous users rounds off to $39. A free trial, of course, is available for everyone.
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I still can’t decide between Parallels and Fusion. Actually the only reason I chose Fusion earlier was because it was definitely faster. But now that these guys claim 50% improvement in speed, I’m back to square 1. Is Smoking Apples doing a shootout?
And sorry about spamming your posts. I haven’t had the net for a while and have only been reading the blog via my rss reader on the iPhone. Back on my Mac and going crazy on the comments LOL!
skizzy November 17th, 2008 at 3:24 am