Hands-on with Parallels VM for OS X
As seen in my previous post, it's now possible to run Mac OS X and Windows XP (or any other PC OS) simultaneously on Macs that use Intel processors. I've downloaded the beta of Parallels Workstation 2.1. I've installed XP. I've taken screenshots. We have a winner on our hands here.
I'll start with the shots. Here we have the VM booting of the XP install CD.
Setup starts copying files.
Then the Windows GUI loads.
Unlike emulations products, the CPU rarely pegs.
Like Ars, I thought this was funny.
Welcome to OS XP.
Safari and IE, together again at last.
Now, you may be thinking this looks an awful lot like Virtual PC on PowerPC Macs, or Wintel, Q or other emulators on Intel Macs. You'd be right. It does look a lot like that. The difference is this product is fast. Like as fast as a real PC. Everything happens quickly. XP and OS X both run at full speed. I can't state how amazing it is to have these two OSes running at the same time and having both be responsive.
Now, there are a couple of problems. First, I can't get sound to work. I haven't tried much, but I wanted to mention it. I've run the software installer that ties the VM to the host (including copy/paste support), but still no sound.
Also, you can only boot from an image. That means you can not boot from your Boot Camp partition.
Lastly, the video redraw isn't all that fast. It's not terrible, but it is not as quick as rebooting via Boot Camp. I suspect optimizations can be made, after all this is a beta release.
I'll post more about the experience as I use the product.
digg
I'll start with the shots. Here we have the VM booting of the XP install CD.
Setup starts copying files.
Then the Windows GUI loads.
Unlike emulations products, the CPU rarely pegs.
Like Ars, I thought this was funny.
Welcome to OS XP.
Safari and IE, together again at last.
Now, you may be thinking this looks an awful lot like Virtual PC on PowerPC Macs, or Wintel, Q or other emulators on Intel Macs. You'd be right. It does look a lot like that. The difference is this product is fast. Like as fast as a real PC. Everything happens quickly. XP and OS X both run at full speed. I can't state how amazing it is to have these two OSes running at the same time and having both be responsive.
Now, there are a couple of problems. First, I can't get sound to work. I haven't tried much, but I wanted to mention it. I've run the software installer that ties the VM to the host (including copy/paste support), but still no sound.
Also, you can only boot from an image. That means you can not boot from your Boot Camp partition.
Lastly, the video redraw isn't all that fast. It's not terrible, but it is not as quick as rebooting via Boot Camp. I suspect optimizations can be made, after all this is a beta release.
I'll post more about the experience as I use the product.
digg
This entry was posted by Mike McHargue, on
4.06.2006.
You can leave your response.
10:07 AM
I'm glad to hear that it moves faster than Virtual PC. So it sounds like this is a workable solution. What apps have you run in XP? How did they perform?
10:09 AM
So far, I've only used IE, FireFox and Office 2003. All ran as quickly as the do when I'm booted directly in XP, at least subjectively.
10:10 AM
Wow, that's great news! Keep us posted.
10:40 AM
Awesome! A couple of quick questions:
*I didn't notice what system you was on: MBP,Mini,iMac? What are your specs?
*Is there a full screen mode? I glanced through the documentation and didn't see anything.
Finally, I don't know if you know about You Control Desktops (yousoftware.com). I use this with RDC at full screen and rotate my screen (with effects) between Win and OSX. This will be awesome with this. I can't wait.
10:43 AM
This is on a MacBook Pro 1.83 GHz with 2 GB RAM and a 120 GB drive.
There is a full screen mode.
I've not seen You Control, I'll have to check that out.
10:55 AM
Have you tried installing the drivers that boot camp creates in the virtual environment?
11:35 AM
Thanks for the reply to my questions. FYI. I noticed YouControl Desktops is not yet universal binary (I think). There are other alternatives that do the same thing, yet again I do not know if they are UB or not.
2:34 PM
not UB... but free and working fine in my Mac mini > http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/
2:37 PM
Any luck with using USB based devices? Can the virtual PC regognize plugged in USB hardware like VMWare or VirtualPC.
Thanks.
3:16 PM
What about drag and drop from the XP to OSX desktop? If that works, I'm all in.
8:57 PM
I know you didn't do this, but do you know if one can install Win2000, then use the upgrade disk to upgrade to WinXP?
12:03 PM
The biggest thing I'd like to see Parallels do is add support for booting from an existing XP installation on another drive partition. That way, I could use my existing XP setup from "BootCamp" with it, instead of redundantly installing a second copy of XP on the OS X partition!
12:09 PM
FYI, I got this email from Parallels this AM:
Hello, Mike.
Thank you for your interest to Parallels Workstation!
Booting the VM from real partition is not possible in this Beta.
Such feature support is in our future plans.
1:32 PM
have you checked the specs on the roaters?
7:54 PM
Could you post some performance data for XP within Parallels VM? I think they plan to improve the graphics driver soon. And if they allow booting from a partition, it will be perfect. VM for most tasks, reboot for games.
10:41 AM
hmm:
http://news.com.com/Dare+I+say+this+aloud+Boot+Camp+is+a+gimmick/2010-1041_3-6059118.html
12:18 PM
But Mike were you able to make the full screen mode work? When I try to kick in the "full screen" mode I see a complaint about XFree86-VidModeExtension, and then I get an error "Unable to switch to fullscreen mode. Primary operating system does not support screen resolution requested by guest operating system..." but they are the same.