Dual Boot.... why when you can virtualise ;-)

[rangr]

Some notes and tips after spending most of yesterday using parallels:

 

1. Install the Parallels tools after installing your guest OS. It's in the VM menu, simply select Install Parallels Tools. This installs Parallels drivers, and gives you many screen resolution options, as well as allowing the mouse in and out of guest OS windows without hitting ctrl+alt.

 

2. The mouse movement is greatly improved by reducing accleration in the XP settings. In XP go to control panels >> display >> settings >> advanced and REDUCE the acceleration by ONE notch. I saw this on the parallels forum somewhere and it works. The mouse moves very smoothly after this.

 

3. You can connect to Ethernet OR Airport by changing the Network Adapter Option in the parallels console. en1 gives you ethernet, en0 connects the guest OS to airport.

 

4. I've not yet found a way to connect to the host machine's disk (the startup disk) or any folders within the disk. There's this on the parallels forum:

 

http://forum.parallels.com/thread124.html

 

but I haven't had any success trying it. Windows just tells me the folder (via IP address given by osX sharing system preferences) is unavailable. Tried using both the en0 and en1 in network adapter settings. If there's a solution PLEASE POST IT.

 

5. My full install of XP runs very fast. After steps 1 & 2 above, you wouldn't know from using it that it's virtualized. I used to use VPC 6 on my G4 PB, VPC 7 on G5 iMac, and tried Q for intel Mac. Parallels is blazingly faster than any of them. I see no difference between using my Cad software on Parallels and using it on my colleagues Dell. If there's a solution to #4, I'll delete Boot Camp and reclaim the precious GB from that partition.

[antic]

Personnaly I have never tried to use Vmware or the Parallel. I was wondering is it not possible to use the bootcamp drivers that apple have supplied to get sound, wireless and better graphics support.

[Austinhow]

Honestly this visualization seems like a rip off of vmware, looks the same, acts the same, even the same drag bars for setting everything up.

 

I was thinking the exact same thing. This is just virtual machine technology, which has been around a while in various forms. In fact its probably just a port of the same software thats available for Windows. I'm not really knocking it as it's awesome for those who need that sort of thing, but this isn't the seamless integration of running two native OSes running at the same time that intel touts as being possible with their new chips.

[settolo]

Parallels seems to support VT technology, which is quite new (intel duo). It should give direct access to the hardware, do not know if it works or not.

[92GTA]

I feel the same way. Intel makes it sound as though you can actually have both OS's booted and running natively at the same time and you could simple toggle between the two. With the release of Bootcamp and 10.5 coming up, I hope that's where they are going with this. Seems to me it would only take a slight alteration to Bootcamp and I'm sure Apple already has a running build of this internally Bootcamp/10.5 wise. Also look at the upcoming Merom chips, 2x2MB for 4MB's of L2? Gimme a freakin break! It's been proven that 2MB's is overkill, why else would they implement 4MB unless they did have this in mind. Why drive up production cost and R&D needlessly? Plus think about it, with 64-bit you can run 4GB+ of memory, perfect for doing this! Vista 64-bit, 10.5 64-bit, Merom, and 4GB's of memory running the final Bootcamp, hmmm......

[chiefsalami]

You guys are somewhat right in the sense that this seems to be a rip of vmware. The BIG difference is that the processor in Parallels is not emulated, as it is with VMWare or even Virtual PC - it has direct access to it. So that's where the virtualization piece comes in, and the speed advantages of using that technology. I guess that if you install it on a machine that does not have virtualization technology, such as the guy that did it on his Hackintosh, then the speed should be the same as what VMWare or Virtual PC offer.

 

Also, it sounds like the other hardware is emulated right now, but it would be great to see future versions of this, or even Apple's own technology in Leopard directly access the video card and other hardware.

[dailo]

Parallels is much faster then my vmware setup on my desktop. It usually took me 20-30 minutes to compile a FreeBSD kernel on my desktop, but now with parallels on my 2.0ghz MBP it takes like 15 minutes tops. Much faster than Q!!! It's amazing how fast windows boots with P to, I'm loving it! Can't wait for the full release.

[urig-herb]

...

I guess that if you install it on a machine that does not have virtualization technology, such as the guy that did it on his Hackintosh, then the speed should be the same as what VMWare or Virtual PC offer.

 

That's right. My processor isn't supporting VT and Parallels is running kind of slow, only a bit faster than Q. It feels slower as vmware under XP.

 

Edit:

BTW: This is the first use of Intel VT ever, or do you know other programs?

[EtherealRemnant]

Just because I can... I installed it on my AMD hackintosh (just go into the package and remove the installationcheck program) and I'm about to try out Gentoo on it.

 

Can't figure out how to make it use a physical DVD though and its rather frustrating.

 

EDIT: Yeah... definitely way slower than Q on my machine... Gentoo net install CD... 5 minutes and it JUST finished loading.

[slylock]

The Parallels website talks about Hypervisor, which is "a thin layer of software, inserted between the machine’s hardware and the primary operating system..." Can anyone comment on what this is, or how exactly it gets inserted?

 

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/

[jrrjrr]

Parallels runs Win2K about 50% faster than Q does on my P4 laptop, but more devices are working for me with the Q installation, so I am going to stick with it still for a while. I will try Parallels again as they get closer to a final release.

[rangr]

Spent most of today actually working within the Parallels virtual machine (XP Pro) and got the multi-lingual screen of death-- three times. I see from the parallels forums others have experience this... it _is_ a beta, hoping for updates released soon, it's such a promising solution.

 

Until then, there's Boot Camp.

[AldousHxlE]

I'm very familiar with VMWare, and I totally agree this is almost identical to that program. Even the steps to setting up a new virtual machine are almost the same. Still, very cool program, and I'd like to see how well it progresses over time.

 

Anyway, enjoy the screenshot. I forgot how long it took to install Kubuntu (over an hour!), but it worked great after installation. Very impressive for a beta.Kubuntu.tiff

[gooki]

"This is the first use of Intel VT ever, or do you know other programs?"

 

Prety sure Xen was first.

[wolf]

Hi all,

I installed successfully Parallels on my hacintosh but once I try to boot from CD XP I get the message "Unable to connect VM to port %1". I adjusted boot properties to CD,HD,Floppy. No success. Any hints?

 

Intel i945GNTL

P4 630

1GB RAM

PATA Maxtor

DVD burner

10.4.5

custom mach_kernel (base patch only) 8.4.1

[josejrp]

For some reason, the max reserved memory I can give Parallels in my Dell laptop running OS X 10.4.5 is 96MBs... Of course, the Virtual Machine memory can't then exceed this amount. I have a gig of RAM installed... any ideas?

[esmith1977]

I have been using a Pentium 4 3 gigahertz processor NOT dual core..

 

XP using Parallels is kinda slow on this processor...

 

Is the Virtualization feature something only on a Dual Core processor?

 

If so, does that mean than my XP would be up to 'normal' speed if I bought a Dual Core?

[mac tosh]

apparently, only the core-duo chips presently support the VT (virtualization), which is a new feature for the Intel chips.

 

But this whole thing is so new it's caught me off guard and I am still a bit skeptical of the claims as I haven't tried it yet myself (although I've pre-ordered as it seems like a sweat deal)

 

But this is what everyone is reporting.