Parallels Desktop for Mac build 3094 Beta 2 is available for download.
 

Hello community!

As part of our continuing efforts to bring you the best virtualization solutions available, we’re proud to make Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta2 (Build 3094) early available to you. As with all previous updates, all registered Parallels customers will receive the final version of this update FREE!

Additional details are available on this page: [url]http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta_testing/[/url]

[COLOR="Red"]PLEASE REMEMBER:[/COLOR] this is a beta software, and like any other beta software you should treat it very carefully. Do not install this Beta 2 into the production environment yet. Do backup your virtual machines before trying them with Beta 2.

As usual, any feedback is extremely appreciated at [email]beta@parallels.com[/email] mailbox.

Best regards,
Tim and Parallels Team

cool...freebsd workie again. yay. it didn't seem to bork my xp or debian installs either. haven't had a ton of time with it yet, but the new coherence stuff seems great so far.

Is there a Parallels Tools for Boot Camp for this release too?

[B]Wingdo[/B],

Tools for Boot Camp are not needed anymore. If you have them installed, please deinstall prior to first boot via Parallels Desktop.

nice, great job guys, lots of features in this one. i think i'm ready to pull the trigger this weekend and finally upgrade from 1970.

I had to activate Windows again after upgrading (same thing happened with 3036), though I don't use BootCamp.

Wow, sounds great! I'll have to try it out. Thanks a lot, Parallels team! Too bad I already converted my drive to NTFS, but I'll live with it. :P

USB 2.0 High Speed support question
 

I noted with much glee that the latest Parallels beta now supports high speed USB 2. Finally!! Thank you for implementing this. However, I have a question.

One of my main irritations with Parallels is the extreme slow sync speed of my PDA smartphone. (it is a T-Mobile MDA, which is actually a HTC Wizard in T-Mobile clothing. This is a Windows Mobile 5 device, and I am running ActiveSync 4.2 in Parallels.) I am hoping that the new USB 2 support will improve my sync speed; however the following note in the release notes concerns me: "NOTE! Current Build 3094 doesn’t support isochronous devices such as web cameras, microphones, etc."

What exactly is an isochronous device, and is my PDA/smartphone considered one? (note I am syncing using RNDIS mode) If RNDIS mode is incompatible then would switching to the older serial sync protocol help?

Thanks for the help.
Donald

[QUOTE=Tim Surgent][B]Wingdo[/B],

Tools for Boot Camp are not needed anymore. If you have them installed, please deinstall prior to first boot via Parallels Desktop.[/QUOTE]

Does this mean that from now there will only be one boot setup in Boot Camp (as opposed to the way we currently have to choose setups depending on how we are booting)?

Hmmm...
 

First the good news:

Coherence improvements are awesome. It really makes you feel like you are using a unified OS. The one remaining feature I would ask for (and I know this is uber anal of me), is to somehow mask the rounded corners of the Luna theme. Because the Luna theme uses rounded corner windows, the tiny bit of the corner shows the desktop color through it in Coherence mode. It annoyed me so much I switched to the classic windows theme. It's ugly, but at least no ugly corner windows.

Now, the bad/ugly news:

Tried to use my Bootcamp FAT32 partition. Upon booting, it complained about needing to restart, but the app (and Parallels was apparently hung). Upon force quitting and restarting Parallels, my boot camp partition was trashed. Oh well. I'll probably reinstall Windows on a boot camp partition and try to use it in Parallels, but only after Parallels hits a final release.

Bug: Use Boot Camp is greyed out
1) Booted into Boot Camp.
2) Uninstalled tools for Boot Camp.
3) Booted back into OS X. Installed the new version.
4) Tried to create a new virtual machine and "Use Boot Camp" is greyed out. :(

These new features are nice:
The video driver has 16MB of memory so you can run 32-bit on a 30" at native 2560 resolution.
The option to turn on-off live action in the dock.

For you rounded corner problem, just use the same desktop wallpaper in windows that you are using for OS X. Make sure they are both either centered or stretched.

Website is getting hammered right now. Darn I wanted to test this out before closing for the holidays.

rounded corner problem...
 

[QUOTE]For you rounded corner problem, just use the same desktop wallpaper in windows that you are using for OS X. Make sure they are both either centered or stretched.[/QUOTE]

That would not help when you move a Windows "window" on top of a Mac OS X window. You can see the blue remainer in the corner of each window corner.

The only way to do it right is to apply some masking to Windows. Might be too much work for the return on investment, though.

[QUOTE=nobius]Website is getting hammered right now. Darn I wanted to test this out before closing for the holidays.[/QUOTE]
Maybe someone who downloaded the beta already ought to post a torrent of it or something....

No kidding this release will have USB 2.0???? Very cool if it's true.

Still downloading. So far it's taken me 30 min to DL 22.1 MBs. I have 7MB DSL. What a rush.

[QUOTE=nobius]Website is getting hammered right now. Darn I wanted to test this out before closing for the holidays.[/QUOTE]

Wow, I should have downloaded it 10 minutes ago when I got to the server no problem. I waited until I booted into BootCamp first!

It is downloading, but slowly.

I wonder if there is going to be a way to avoid the "profiles" thing when I boot into windows (choose one of two profiles) which is rather annoying.

May I suggest that we create new threads for issues/questions with this new beta rather than using reply in this thread? It gets really hard to follow a thread with hundreds of posts.

Ubuntu resolution?
 

I noticed when I installed 3094, Windows saw a different video controller. Now when I started my ubuntu 6.10 VM, I no longer get anything over 1024x768, even though the are enabled in the VM profile. I am assuming the fundamental video architecture changed, and it is no longer a "modified" vesa video controller. Will Parallels be releasing a linux 2.6 video driver ?

Thanks and regards,

Jeff