Leopard Problems - Advice re Fusion Switch?

I have delayed switching to Leopard due to all of the problems reported here. I need Windows support on my Mac - no choice, but I also want to upgrade to Leopard.

How tough is it to switch over to Fusion, given that I have been using Parallels for quite some time now? I am running 5160. One of my primary use modes is VPN'ing to work on our Microsoft small business server. Are there any big holes left in Fusion compared to Parallels?

Thanks in advance for any guidance/advice. Also it seems odd to me that Parallels is claiming that they were caught by surprise with the Oct 26 Gold build, when others are reporting that the competition runs just fine.

 

I use NetScreen Remote for VPN and also had fears of Parallels not working, when I need it for the full 100%. So I installed build 5162 first, before upgrading to Leopard. After installing Leopard, I installed the 5162 again and the MacFUSE Core update as said in http://forum.parallels.com/showpost.php?p=86596&postcount=17. Everything is working fine, except for the F11 and F12 keys, which in my case are mirrors of the PrtScn and ScrLk keys.

 

Hello,

Leopard is a bit fresh and Parallels is rather complicated software that requires deep interaction with the host OS. So our build 5160 generally runs on Leopard well but of course there can be a set of issues that may actually cause some functionality limitations. We are aware of them and working to solve all of them. We appreciate users' reports and are trying to fix all the reported bugs as soon as possible.

Best regards,
Alicia.

 

Alicia,

Thanks for the reply, but in my case the use of Parallels is "mission critical", and I have been very pleased so far. However, I really want to move to Leopard. I realize that it might work, but the reports of it not working are so widespread that I just cannot afford to take the risk that the Leopard/Parallels combo will somehow break my system and/or leave Parallels inoperable. I realize that you cannot commit to a date when these issues will be cleared up, so this adds to my concerns.

Hence I am reluctantly looking for an alternative.

 

Thank you for your feedback anyway. I understand you and really sorry for such inconvenience. We're working hard on that and I hope we'll release updates quite soon.

Best regards,
Alicia.

 

kthacher,
You would have to go through an involved export procedure to get Fusion working, unless they built an importer recently.

Once you figure out how to use Parallels, there is no going to Fusion, Parallels feels cleaner, faster, and has less problems. I came to this conclusion ~6 months ago, to be reinforced by my local system administrator buddies.

The Leopard issue is not surprising to me. Virtualization is not 'easy' to code, and a major update like Leopard can throw it very easily, considering that the actual released Leopard was not available to Developers well in advance (no, RCs don't really count as things are subject to change), and therefore you can just 'hope' your program is no affected. The issues could have just as easily been Fusion's with nor problems in Parallel's hand.

Seeing you are running mission critical things, I wouldn't even consider running Leopard for at least another month, unless you do extensive testing on a non-mission critical machine.

 

I'd suggest you go take a look at the Fusion forums, you will notice there are quite a lot of issues there too.

If your system is as critical as you say, then you should not upgrade to Leopard unless you have done some very extensive testing.

For myself, I use parallel in full screen mode only on a secondary monitor. Do not use any kind of sharing between OS X and windows and ahve had excellent results.

 

fusion experience

I have had a lot of problems with fusion, and recently purchased parallels. I have just installed Leopard, and have an annoying problem with slow reponse on one of my program spinning beach ball of death) here is my list of fusion issues though:

- I have had to reactivate windows 3 times now. There appears to be some code that causes windows registration info to be lost by fusion. I couldn't boot into boot camp either after this. very annoying.

- fusion takes a long time to wake up when it goes to sleep, and it pretty much ties up OSX as well, sometimes for several minutes

- when I had the activation issue, I also lost the registration for adobe audition as well. audition refused to re-register, and it was a monkey show with adobe to get it going again (3 times as well)

I actually really liked fusion in some ways, but would wait, it is going to have just as many issues for the next little while...

 

Thanks CC for this input. I know this is complex stuff, but I am suprised at how badly both these companies have dropped the ball on Leopard. Very disappointing. I guess I have no choice but to sit tight for now.

 

no worries

I agree. They should have been able to get the beta's and test the cr*p out of them. I saw the parallels release where they gave an out that apple might change something on the afinl build, but I don't buy that, the problems appear to widespread...btw, apple leased the first patch to Leopard today, but it actually works really well. mist of my windows stuff is ok in parallels as well, but the spinning ball is driving me....

 

More like Apple really dropped the ball on Leopard... They didn't give out a GM release in advance, how else can you except virtualization software to run stabley unless they can actually see what they are building with.

 

I think my Parallels 5160 runs fine on Leopard (haven't tested it very much but I started on Leo and didn't report any problems so I assume that it works).

The other thing is Leopard... I think it's the worst release of X I've seen until today (ok, I admit it: 10.0 was even worse)...
I would not recommend it to use Leopard in a mission critical environment until 10.5.1 comes out and even then I would wait with it. I'm still angry because of the money I've spent on this release...

I'm a software developer myself and going gold one week before a product hits the shelf is much too late. Apple tried to hit the release window but with this release they hit the window like a bird...

 

Fair enough about Apple, but then they should not have made the statements they did about parallels beng compatible. People may have thought twice about upgrading so soon...

 

There is already a version of Parallels Desktop that is compatible with Leopard - but it is still in beta. Here's more info and the download page.

 

capedcrusader, Parallels did give notice on possible bugs.
See Ben Rudolph's note on The Official Parallels Virtualization Blog, as an example.

Best regards,
Xenos

 

Don't you read the statements? They never said it would be fully-compatible.

 

Yes, I can read. I have posted the blog clipping below. Yes they warned about last minute changes, but mainly they say of course it will work (see the third paragraph and read it a few times). At the end of the day, I am not here to flame parallels and their staff. The product is great (I also have used fusion extensively, so I know both sides),and I am pretty confident that they will deal with all the issues. At the end of the day though, I just think more care should have been taken in the statements made:

As I noted in last Friday's post, we're only a few weeks (maybe days?) away from the launch of Mac OS X 10.5, code named "Leopard". Since many of you (and me) plan on upgrading to Leopard within minutes of its release, the question that naturally arises is "Does Parallels Desktop work with Leopard?"

The answer? Of course it does!

We've been working with Leopard since its earliest beta forms, and we're confident that Parallels Desktop is compatible with Leopard. Performance is great, and core functionality works smoothly. You'll be able to safely upgrade to Leopard when it goes live without worrying that Parallels will work.

That being said, its entirely possible that Apple will make some last minute changes in the final "gold master" build of Leopard that may cause some minor bugs to pop up in Parallels. If that happens, we'll release a free, automatic update to account for them very soon after Leopard's launch.