Looking for Cool Parallels Stories

[josh@parallels]

Hey everybody, it's Josh from the Parellels Marketing Team. I'm looking for cool stories fom real users about how you're implementing the Desktop product. I'd like to hear about how you're using it in the office, for school, for fun, to run older applications on classic OSes, and so on.

Just tell me what guest OS you're running, what applications you're using on it, and how it's helped you.

You can e-mail me directly at jmarans@parallels.com

Thanks, and I hope you continue enjoying Parallels Desktop!

[Banacek]

Hey everybody, it's Josh from the Parellels Marketing Team. I'm looking for cool stories fom real users about how you're implementing the Desktop product. I'd like to hear about how you're using it in the office, for school, for fun, to run older applications on classic OSes, and so on.

Just tell me what guest OS you're running, what applications you're using on it, and how it's helped you.

You can e-mail me directly at jmarans@parallels.com

Thanks, and I hope you continue enjoying Parallels Desktop!

Hey, here's a cool Parallels story:

Once Parallels Desktop Final Version was released, it seems that all of the tech support has been thrown out the window. Sounds like an interesting story to me.

[airskeeter]

Josh,

My company has mac and PC software. I am using it to demo both to customers and the support has been great for me!

Bill

[josh@parallels]

Airskeeter,

Thanks for the reply! That's a perfect example and I'd love to hear others like it.

-josh

[joem]

I'm using Win2k as guest, which I prefer to XP so boot camp is a suboptimal solution. I use PCs for software development, and need things like email, etc. in the PC environment, so even though I could theoretically switch everything to Mac, maintaining identical versions on my desktop and laptop is a requirement. So I can now sync email and development projects between laptop and desktop, and work wherever I am in the PC environment, and enjoy having a Mac as well, and all in a 5.5 pound package.

Now if only full USB 2.0 pass through were available, the Mac would do everything I need in a portable machine.

And BTW, I think that post about support is an undeserved cheap shot by someone who is acting very selfishly by assuming he ought to be the center of your universe. (IMNSHO)

[Banacek]

And BTW, I think that post about support is an undeserved cheap shot by someone who is acting very selfishly by assuming he ought to be the center of your universe. (IMNSHO)

How is it a cheap shot? Some people have been waiting for weeks with no response from Parallels. I PAID for software that isn't working. That's selfish? Since when? Read this, I'm not the only one:

http://forums.parallels.com/thread3038.html

[akac]

Personally I am using Parallels to switch from a Dell to do our Windows Mobile development. We do commercial Windows Mobile development and it was only because of Parallels that we were able to switch our main dev machines back to the Mac.

So that's been great. I've had zero issues with the product in what I use it for. USB support is not good at all, but thankfully I don't use that - yet. I am concerned about the lack of support, though. At least acknowledge people's issues.

[rbc]

Josh,

Here is a little story about how I used Parallels to consolidate FreeBSD hosting:

http://home.hakuhale.net/rbc/VirtualProduction.html

Best regards,

--Bruce

[biggles]

I work as a consultant. Naturally most of my clients have "the other OS" installed. I wanted to switch to a Mac (20x years PC-user) but I had to have access to Win XP. When Apple released boot-camp my heart begun to beat a little harder. It still seemed like to much trouble though. But then a friend sent me an article from the Register which had a lot of information about virtualization technology. One company mentioned was Parallels. After some research in the forums, I went to the nearest Aplle Store and bought a MacBook Pro. Home, downloaded Parallels desktop and started instaling Win XP. After about half an hour or so, I was up and running. Next step was to order a real license for Parallels Desktop and get going. Now I do most my work in OS X but when I visit a customer which has special PC-applications, I just fire up Parallels Desktop and is ready to go in about 30 sec. It's wonderful! When you combine it with virtue desktops, even the most hardcore WinXP-fan is amazed!

Thanks a lot for this magnificent product!

[blomasky]

I LIVE on my Mac (MBP), but I make my LIVING in the PC World (Delphi, SQL Server, Watchguard Firewall and a few esoteric programming languages that are NOT available on the Mac).
Prior to my MBP, I was carrying 2 laptops with me, My Powerbook and a Thinkpad. Shortly after purchasing my MBP, Bootcamp (B) was released by Apple and I thought I could NOT be any happier. I was able to boot into XP (after partitioning 30 G for XP) do my work and anytime I needed to go back to OSX, I would shut down XP and Reboot. That took about 3-4 Min and while I had to do that many times during the day, it was a small price to pay for not carrying 2 computers (chargers, et. al).

The fact that (B) requires a FIXED SIZE partition and there is no easy way to RESIZE it meant that my 100G disk had < 60 gig for OSX (could not carry my music and photo library with me, they were both about 20 G). (P), of course, with the variable sized Virtual HD gave me back about 15-20G, YEA!

I tried Parallels (P) during the beta and decided to stay with (B) until (P) was released. (there were too many little bugs (especially with networking) during the beta for me to use it for development.

Once (P) was released, I tried it again and WOW, Almost everything works FINE! It is SO nice to hit a single key (OK, 2 keys, ALT-ENTER) and switch from running XP in a full screen to running it in a window with access to ALL my OSX programs. The ability to use the clipboard to copy between OSX and (P) has been an real advantage.

I was sceptical about the performance with Virtualization and the fact that my 2G of Ram was shared between OSX and (P). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the application in focus would run at about 95% of the speed compared to (B). This was very acceptable!

In addition, I am now (finally!) doing REAL backups. It is a breeze to copy my Virtual HD (1 File) to my backup disk.

Of course, all is not perfect. I am waiting (impatiently!) for the next upgrade that handles function keys a little better, better USB support. At this point, I would give (B) a "7" on a 0-10 score and (P) gets a 9+.

Bruce

[prx]

Hi,

I develop software for handhelds for businesses, so a lot of specific tools need to work under Parallels for me to be able to get things done.

I replaced a setup that looked like this:
- PC with XP (development environment)
-- running a VMWare image of Windows 2000 running SQL Server (client environment)

with a MacBook running Parallels.

This allows me to debug under XP and connect via network to the W2K PC - seamlessly.
There is no problem connecting to VPNs or Palm handhelds using USB. I can run SQL server.

As a bonus, it's about 20% faster when compiling.

A great product!

[ChrisHerman]

You'll find some real world stories at macintale.blogspot.com (http://macintale.blogspot.com)

[8ender]

I used to use a PC and my iBook networked together on my desk to do my job as Web Developer and Graphic Designer. Our organization is entirely PC except for myself. When we heard of Parallels my boss figured we could give it a shot and go completely Mac on my desktop.

We bought an Intel iMac, loaded up Parallels, and installed Windows XP. I now use Parallels every day and Vitrue to switch between them. I couldn't be happier. I can do my Web Development and Design on Mac OS, and use special applications like Oracle Forms, Report Builder, PL/SQL Developer, and Outlook on Parallels. To share files we have both OSX and XP connected to our Windows Server shares and everything works perfectly.

Recently we went a bit further and cloned my Windows XP installation to create a seperate copy with Internet Explorer 7 Beta installed. We now also have a Windows 98 image as well to test our web sites. Its absolutely the best setup possible for a Web Developer, and I am in development bliss. Being able to build some CSS and HTML in OSX, test it on Safari and Firefox, and then whip over to Windows XP to test it in Internet Explorer is brilliant.

[ehamburg]

I just wanted to take a step back and state that having the ability to run XP Pro on my MacBook Pro using Parallels is proving to be a great boon to my professional productivity. I travel on business regularly and in the past I had to forsake my Mac as my travel computer during these trips to assure that I had the Windows tools that many of my clients require. Now I can travel with my MBP and have everything I need with that computer.

I have had some issues with network connectivity on the XP side at some wireless hot spots, particularly T-Mobile, due to the way they have their wifi network configured (discussed in another thread), but other public wireless providers (e.g., AT&T) don't pose a limitation. I also have also not yet been able to get my XP VM to work with the Apple USB modem when I find myself having to depend on dial-up (I understand that this should work, but I haven't gotten it to), but in most cases, I can work around that by moving data files around using a shared folder and using networking on the Mac side to get data where I need it to go. Therefore I can now redeploy and dedicate my Windows laptop to another task ... using it for astrophotography with my Meade telescope, where the software is only available for Windows.

In my office environment I use a PowerMac Dual 2.0 G5, and had given up on using VirtualPC as it is just way too slow and had too many limitations. (Using VPC on my older 800 MHz/1 GB TiBook was a total non-starter.) So I always had to crank up my Windows laptop to run Windows apps. Now I use my MBP when I need Windows. (Also note that the MBP in most ways is an equal if not better performer than the PowerMac) When the time comes to replace the PowerMac, in a year or so, I will definitely replace it with either the next generation Intel based "MacPro" tower or even an iMac so I can run Parallels on it. Assuming (which is not a stretch) that the performance on an Intel based iMac is at least as good as the MBP the iMac may be the logical next step. The only real drawback for me on the iMac is the limited disk internal disk space.

In any case, I just wanted to express the positive effect that then new Intel based Macs and Parallels has had for me personally.

[steve_w]

Parallels Desktop for Mac gives me unparalleled productivity on my MacBook Pro.

I work for a developer that specializes in documentation management software. The solution can be deployed on Windows and UNIX-based systems. With Parallels, I can demonstrate the product to the customer according to the intended deployment platform.

One of my tasks is to streamline and document the installation procedures on various operating system (Solaris, Windows, Linux, Mac OS) and database (Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL) configurations.

With Parallels, I can experiment with different virtual machine hardware setups. When appropriate, I save a snapshot of the guest OS to my external hard disk. That way, I can test and verify the various stages of the installation procedures by restoring the guest OS.

Having struggled with VirtualPC (since version 2) and RealPC (now defunct) for many years, Parallels on Intel-based Macs is a winning combination. Parallels would be even better by resolving USB support issues and improving video support.

One annoying hiccup is that Solaris 10 x86 platform regularly hangs on boot up. Both (1/06) and 96/06) builds have the same problem. I'm running with 512 MB and 1 GB RAM setups. My workaround is to reset the VM. It usually boots fine the second time around. I read elsewhere in the forum that this problem doesn't occur when the RAM is reduced to 256 MB. I've yet to try this.

[ajay]

I use Parallels to run my Windows Quicken 2004 program. This has allowed my to dump, altogether, a microsoft pc running Windows and I couldn't be happier. I backup my Quicken data to a Cruzen mini 1.0 GB USB stick without problem. It is detected, faithfully, by Parallels and I can print using my HP laserjet 1300 from Windows via network settings. Can things be improved, of course. Am I happy with how things are now, you bet. Keep it up Parallels, you're doing just fine by me. :)

[Jmdor]

I'm using Parallels on my Macbook to run (1) Quicken 2005, so I don't have to use the cripple Quicken for mac software, and (2) My Pfaff 3D embroidery software for my sewing machine, which did not work under Virtual PC, by the way. Both an tremendously quick and parallels is a joy to use.

Something that I did not think would work, but did: I was able to use remote assistance with my mother's PC online, fixing her problems while never having to go find an actual PC. What an amazing, simplifying concept! Thanks for your product!

-----
MacBook (black) 2 GB.

[dkp]

I have a production Linux server I support part time and it needed some code installed that has to be compiled from source. It has no dev environment on it, and I have no other Linux system as we're predominantly a Solaris shop. Then I realized I have a perfectly good but completely unused Fedora VM installation on my Mac as a whim of curiosity. So I wget'd the source over to it, built some configure scripts and ran make, make test, make install. Damn, there it is. I packaged it up, sent it to the prod system and damn again, there it is and it's working fine.

Cost to me: Some time.

dp .. who remains Parallels' happiest customer

[Ulfalizer]

I used Parallels Desktop to work through the Linux From Scratch book, using the LFS LiveCD. I didn't run into any problems whatsoever, and doing it in Parallels instead of on the "bare metal" has many advantages. To name a few:

* You get a comfortable environment to look up information in, and switching to other activities is quick and painless.
* You can make backups of the entire system at critical points (this can be done on the bare metal, but I can't think of a solution that's as safe and easy).
* By suspending the guest, you can shut down the host without losing system state. This is handy when setting up the environment anew would require a lot of work.

I guess these points hold for most other uses of Parallels Desktop as well.

I also used Parallels to run tools from Xilinx in Windows XP for a HDL project.

/Ulf Magnusson

[lluad]

And BTW, I think that post about support is an undeserved cheap shot by someone who is acting very selfishly by assuming he ought to be the center of your universe. (IMNSHO)

Not at all. I'd have had a nice story about migrating QA for four varieties of windows, several linux variants and possibly solaris/x86 away from vmware to parallels, so that everyone could work from their Macs. But when Parallels support folks don't bother responding to the most basic of pre-sales questions it seems unlikely that they're going to be a company that's reliable enough to use for business use.

So they've likely lost some sales for now. If they want to sell to business, and compete with vmware, they need to mature as a company.

[golfstyle]

Excited!! Sold my powerbook and had to go back to windows laptop for work. now went back out and bought MBP after 3 months of PC. Really pumped but still a tad sceptical of a total switch due to newness of software. Questions though. I sawy someone mention they liked "The ability to use the clipboard to copy between OSX and (P) has been an real advantage." how the heck can you do this? How do you "right-click" in parallels? When is drag and drop coming? Can i save files in parallels to a designated file on osx?

parallels definitely runs smoother and faster then VPC...yuck. i'm excited about a full migration but taking it slow.

thanks in advance.

[Edd]

not really a cool story for other people, but very cool for me.

I'm in a work environment where it's all windows computers networked together. My mac plays very well with the network, but quick network browsing to new data on other computer, or connecting to new computers requires that I know the network IP address of my source or have it automounted or present in the dock.

Parallels has provided me with the opportunity to use windows networking ease on a mac. I can navigate my workgroup and the computers on it quickly and easily dragging and dropping from mapped network shares from the OSX environment and the PC environment.

I prebought the product months ago as I am one of the new mac-converts Stevo is catering to, and it's been invaluable for me for this and not having to by a mac version of rosetta-running adobe acrobat, as my windows version works great.

[Patrick Lee]

Hi,

I am most of the way through converting a small Arts charitable organisation from Windows to Mac. Five of the Mac's are running Parallels and Windows 2000, to run accounting and fund-raising software that is not available for Mac, and to use Explorer to update their hosted web site as the host site only supports Windows + Explorer. So far the transition has been quite smooth, five of seven employees and volunteer workers have been moved over. I will document the process completely when it is done on a web site.

I also support Mac's at a large hospital based research establishment and we have moved to users, who previously had to run a Mac and a windows XP machine to one Mac, running Parallels and Windows XP to access Outlook and specialized databases.

[n9yty]

Hey Patrick Lee, not to pour any water on top of the great success youv'e had, but I also work at a non-profit and we use some fund accounting software not available for the Mac. Instead of using Parallels with a full-blown windows install on each system just so the users can access that, I found it to be probably even more convenient to set up one shared Windows Terminal Server box that all of our staff connects to in order to run that application. Even better, it only requires Apple's X11 on the desktop and the open-source rdesktop software. Or you could use Microsoft's RemoteDesktopConnection. I like X11/rdesktop because the 1.5 beta has seamless support which means that I can have just the application window for the fund accounting software floating on my desktop, mixed in alongside the Mac windows. Very cool stuff, and at least hte client-side software to do this is free, we jus thave to worry about client access licenses from Microsoft/etc. Maybe a solution for you, maybe not, and it does of course require they have a connection path to the windows server in order to use it, while in your case they always have their windows install with them.

Parallels is great to have in the toolkit, and there are some applications for which I can't imagine a better solution. However, like anything, it isn't always the *best*, especially from a management side. Using terminal services I only have to update ONE server and all users get the benefits, no images to keep in sync, etc. I suppose you could have a standardized Paralells image you update all client computers to use, but then you'd have to re-key and re-authorize it for each workstation which can be a pain too.

Just my $0.02, and none of it pours any cold water on Parallels.

[Cereal]

I'm running SAP R/3 4.7 SR1 on Windows 2003 Server in Parallels. It's wonderful! Presentations on Keynote and then switch to SAP GUI pointing to the local instance of R/3. Fast and quick. It's been a life saver.

-David

[danalog]

I use a MacBook for developing websites at the office and on the go (at the moment I am working from my second home in France, normally I work from Amsterdam, NL) and use Parallels with an XP install to check if my css/xhtml works okay in IE6.

Parallels has saved me a lot of deskspace and gained me a lot of mobility. All I need to have now is a MacBook and an external disk for backups. Before I had a huge pc-tower plus monitor, an iMac G3 for checking web sites in OSX and another pc with Linux (webserver). Now I have everything in one tiny shiny MacBook hooked up to a 24" widescreen. I am very happy with parallels, I no longer have the need of three machines on my desk.

As a result of having only one machine I am restyling my office to have a full shiny white look. First purchase is a shiny white Ikea table to use as my new desk.

I wrote a howto for web developers working on MacBook's or MacBook Pro's. The howto includes using Parallels in conjunction with VirtueDesktops. Howto is here (http://www.macbookfan.eu/2006/07/13/howto-everything-a-web-developer-needs-on-a-macbook/).

[LorenFinkelstein]

How about this?

I am a poker player. My online playing has been limited to Macintosh compatible sites, which are few and far between, not to mention underpopulated. I got Parallels Desktop so I could play on the more popular sites and within 2 months I won about $3000 in cash and a $10,000 seat at The World Series of Poker. Sadly, I didn't make it to the money at the WSOP, but at least I got a free vacation in Vegas out of it.

Thanks Parallels...

[jtenenb]

In my view parallels is nothing without Virtue Desktops as I run both OSes simultaniously for different tasks, and can switch between the "sides" of my computer seamlessly. If you really want to market this product, you should demo it with Virtue where you can "flip" back and forth.

[Patrick Lee]

In my client's case, the software "Raisers Edge" only runs in a Windows environment, the SQL database on an NT server, and clients in Windows 2000; the pricing is based on number of clients in use, not number of installs. The client had the option of upgrading the software (multiple $K), and upgrading to Windows Server 2003 and XP also costly. The client is happy with the current solution as they had no problem with the NT/2000 software, only the hardware, which was old. So for this client, I think this is the best solution, although not perfect- but what is. I am now testing moving the NT server to a Parallels VM.

Hey Patrick Lee, not to pour any water on top of the great success youv'e had, but I also work at a non-profit and we use some fund accounting software not available for the Mac. Instead of using Parallels with a full-blown windows install on each system just so the users can access that, I found it to be probably even more convenient to set up one shared Windows Terminal Server box that all of our staff connects to in order to run that application. Even better, it only requires Apple's X11 on the desktop and the open-source rdesktop software. Or you could use Microsoft's RemoteDesktopConnection. I like X11/rdesktop because the 1.5 beta has seamless support which means that I can have just the application window for the fund accounting software floating on my desktop, mixed in alongside the Mac windows. Very cool stuff, and at least hte client-side software to do this is free, we jus thave to worry about client access licenses from Microsoft/etc. Maybe a solution for you, maybe not, and it does of course require they have a connection path to the windows server in order to use it, while in your case they always have their windows install with them.

Parallels is great to have in the toolkit, and there are some applications for which I can't imagine a better solution. However, like anything, it isn't always the *best*, especially from a management side. Using terminal services I only have to update ONE server and all users get the benefits, no images to keep in sync, etc. I suppose you could have a standardized Paralells image you update all client computers to use, but then you'd have to re-key and re-authorize it for each workstation which can be a pain too.

Just my $0.02, and none of it pours any cold water on Parallels.

[Edd]

virtue desktops hopefully is spaces on leopard (as they recently switched domains and the transitions seems to be similar) I just hope that they can fix the universal access enable assistive devices because I use GUI scripting alot and it needs to be enabled.. sadly this means that full screen in virtuedesktops cannot be switched out of without releasing input or exiting full screen first.

Spaces... parallels got a copy of Leopard this week so hope it'll be seemless.

[lithe951]

Not much of a cool story, except that I've been an IT professional for more than 15 years, worked on the original Macs back in the 80's and even know how an AT/XT works. I've been mostly forced to work in the Windows world for years, but had to support and manage Mac networks too, so I've been able to keep up with the evolution.

I tried to make a switch a few years ago with one of the first TiBooks, and what a great machine that was. But I just couldn't get enough of my software to work in the environment, and had to switch back.

Now life is great! I've got a brand-new MacBook Pro and what a phenomenal machine. Thanks to this forum, I've also got Parallels and Windows XP humming along nicely too with lots of tips like key mapping, hardware acceleration adjustments...my only problem is USB mouse tracking in Windows - it's still just not very smooth. Oddly, the trackpad is extremely smooth and almost perfect in Windows.

Great product, very happy with the switch!

Mark

[Esquire]

Okay I sent the last 6 years weening my stepmom off here 12 year old mac.

"it's just easier, i can find things, i can stop a print" she would say
my response: "oh, but windows pc's are so much better, you can download stuff off the net"

i got her to make the switch FINALLY, after years

and now i'm getting a mac Pro with Parrallels, I'm a dead man:confused:

if she kills me she'll get the mac...

Charles Bittner
www.dontquotemeonthat.com

[kiyu]

Hi-
I had a customer that was doing a weekend auto auction. There was going to be a lot of volume but just for a short period. They didn't want to install software on all of the workstations that would be working the auction. They just brought in 10 Windows XP laptops. I brought in my MacBook Pro with Server 2003 in a Parallels VM. Server 2003 was configured with Terminal Services. I also installed Microsoft Access and built a quickie database for the auction to run on. Long story short - high volume during checkout - 10 concurrent Microsoft Access users in Terminal Services on Server 2003 on my MacBook. Oh, and the whole thing was wireless - from the laptops to my MacBook. I'd allocated around 900Megs of RAM ( I have 2Gig in the MacBook ). Nobody ever said anything about performance.

It was amazing.

-Kiyu

[iMbEst]

I'm helping a QSR company (which I am very sure you tried their food b4) to migrate 2 Win3.1 base applications to Parallels. We are developing a brand new system to replace the existing 10 years+ systems. I intend to run the new system on Parallels as well.

Still deciding if I shall use Xserve, WindowsServer or LinuxServer OR the client OS as the host as I need remote access for multiple users.

[Esquire]

i was helping her with a pc problem today, she was at my compy when she realises... "you got a mac" she yells
i reply "it runs windows
"I love it" as she slaps her knee

haha....

oh boy

[C. Alan]

For years I have been trapped by a certain piece of popular Computer Automated Drafting software that only is published for Windows. Now I can finally do most of my work in OS X, and only open Windows XP when I need to draft.

[MilSF1]

We are a software company whose PHP-based software runs on just about anything that runs PHP. To do good QA, I needed to be able to easily test on Mac, Linux, and Windows. Got a MBP with 2GB of memory, Parallels, and started installing.

Linux Fedora Core 5
Apache 2.0.52
PHP 5.1.4
MySQL 5.0.21
PostgreSQL 8.1.3

Windows XP
Apache 2.0.52
PHP 5.1.4
MySQL 5.0.21

Windows 2003 Server
IIS 6
PHP 5.1.6
SQL Server 2005

The really cool thing is that our software has four, separable interfaces. I was able to have one in each VM, and the fourth in OSX. All three were open at the same time and I was able to have them all connect and flow information between them simultaneously. Needless to say, it was a bit slow, but it worked! My next project: Oracle ;)

--Mark