This board is just a joke

Hello folks and peeps,

If this is somehow provocating, its ok, this was my intention.

How this forum is run, .... its just a joke.

People come here with minor problems asking for advice, never come back to their original posts.

People with serious problems come here seeking answers, they never be heard.

Xenos (be blessed), who seems to be the only employee of Paralles posting here, might be trying his very best to support the people, but he alone simply cant manage the flood of requests.

I have an advice for all the peeps here: just look for another forum if you really want to be helped.

Now please, rush on and burn this thread, tell me Im stupid, ignorant or simply destructive.

Or better: Parallels, please be upfront, and put some more professionals in here for help.

Users: think twice before posting here for any request. Be serious and post configs and proper descriptions of your problem.


sincere... and outta here.
Dennis

 

Duck, great post.

The challenge for a user posting here is that one will post a problem, and keep checking back for a response, and checking, and checking, and checking, and checking, and.... eventually one has to move on. Parallels, ever heard of Quark?

Parallels has offered a great solution, but folks need help with the hick-ups along the way. I like the "better": It would be fantastic to see more Support Response on this forum. Hope we can get some of the glinches worked through.

 

Tina, it's funny you mention Quark, because they're the ones that came to my mind too. They simply *owned* the market, then released buggy software, ignored their clients complaints, had extremely terrible support....so when Adobe InDesign came along thousands of clients said "up yours' to Quark...and went with InDesign...just like I did. Quark became a company we loved to hate because they treated us like a captive audience...we had no choice I guess they thought. Well I'm downloading Vmware's Fusion right now, and if it works as it's supposed to, well it's goodbye Parallels.

 

I'm coming to the same conclusion. There are just too many problems with Parallels, and they just don't take them seriously. Take the conflict between Parallels' networking and the driver for Keyspan's USB server. How long have we known about this? It first surfaced about a year ago. For a while there it looked like they were actually interested in fixing it, asking questions and suggesting workarounds, but then they copped out and said it was all Keyspan's fault and there was nothing they could do about it. Then VMWare released fusion, and some of us tried it, and guess what: Apparently there was something VMWare could do about it, because their product doesn't have this problem.

So I'm through with them. I've had enough of the "we can't help it" and the finger-pointing, and the silent treatment when we point out how lame their excuses are. I need solutions, not excuses, and no, I'm not going to uninstall my USB server software just to get Parallels' networking to work. Unlike Parallels, Keyspan's USB server is a good product that does just what it says, and when a conflict with Parallels kept its automatic printer connection feature from working, they released an updated driver that fixed the problem.

It's too bad I didn't know about these issues before I paid for Parallels, but at least I won't repeat my mistake by buying the next version, even if they solve this problem in the next release, because here's the thing: it isn't just that their product doesn't work right. It's their disingenuousness. It's the excuses. It's the blame games. It's the evasiveness. I prefer to spend my money with people who are honest with me.

 

Or you could subscribe to the thread and wait for an email...

Also, part of the point of a forum like this is that people help each other - and that does happen a lot here. I've spent a bit of time helping people out, and I suspect others have spent far more time than me. It actually makes sense - you can't expect the Parallels support staff to have experience of every Windows app, every USB device or every Linux distribution but there might be someone out there who does.

So, if you've had poor "direct" support from Parallels - or if Parallels have been over-reliant on this forum as the front line of support - then you have cause for complaint: by al means go ask for your money back, but I'm not sure if slagging off this forum (and all those who have contributed) is the solution.

I'd be interested to see how the competition copes long-term: personally I think both Parallels and Fusion have a broken business model in terms of support: These products allow long-time Mac users to install & use Windows and Linux. Merely saying that should make anybody who has ever manned an IT helldesk throw up in their mouth a little. You're dealing with all the bugs and complexities of your product multiplied by all the bugs and complexity in the guest OS (and both Linux and Vista have a few...) - you're not going to be able to offer any significant support for that if you sell the product for the bargain-bucket price $80.

In the past, virtualization products for PC have cost several times that - and they were aimed squarely at developers who'd (hopefully) look and say "Ah: I can have bridged networking or shared networking, and there's a DHCP/NAT server here - cool". The PC-hosted virtualization market has also pretty much moved to a model where they give away their base product for free (cool: no support) and charge phone numbers for their well supported "enterprise" versions. Paralells are in a slightly different position because their workstation products are bargain bucket and their "pro" Plesk/Virtuozzo products (AFAIK) use a totally different technology.

I do wonder how much Fusion would have cost if Parallels hadn't got in first and set the price point. I think Parallels have also upped the ante in terms of seamless (ish) MacOS/Windows integration.

 

And wait, and wait, and keep waiting, and wait some more...

And then you think, "There must be something wrong with their subscription system. Someone surely must have responded by now." So you go back and check. Frequently you find the server down, so you come back and check later. Finally you get in, but no one has responded, or someone has responded that they are not having the same problem. On further questioning, you find that they either are not having the problem because they don't own the software that Parallels is conflicting with, or they just hadn't noticed the problem yet, or their configuration is significantly different. Occasionally they make suggestions that have already been made, sometimes in a previous, archived thread, but sometimes in the very thread they're responding to.

We keep checking in the desperate hope that someone from SWsoft will respond and give some indication that they are at least working on the problem. Unfortunately, their participation in this forum now appears to be limited to kicking the server when they notice it isn't responding.

 

This board is NOT a joke. I am seeking help and getting help. But at the same time I feel that things can be vastly improved.

On that matter I have no issues with members nor with the staff - the latter surely does what they can in their limited time.

But I stronlgy believe that the official Parallels policy is a problem. It either has to change by giving a clear statement on what users can expect, if they have limited resources OR by adding extra resources to really help people here.

 

I check the board once a day

and as a volunteer try and help epecially at weekends

I also get a daily email lisiting new posts
learn how to adjust your user settings

I have got a lot of help over the last couple of years

Hugh W

 

It's not just their lack of activity on the board that's a problem. The bigger problem is the lack of anything to report regarding some of the serious issues that need to be fixed. If they're just going to post excuses about why they can't fix this or that, or how something is somebody else's fault they may as well not bother.

 

What you say is so true. I have a couple of posts in the Windows OS section complaining about the lack of support or forthcoming fixes for those issues as well as a few others.
I even wrote a note to Ben, the public face of Parallels, and haven't heard anything from him either.

A thought occurred to me today...what if the sudden lack of support is a sign of a possible merger with VMWare? From the looks of it, the folks are Parallels are more concerned with corporate virtualization nowadays. Might they be planning to unload us plain old desktop users? Interesting to think about.

 

Unfortunately VMWare is also more interested in the enterprise market. That's where the big bucks are. VMWare isn't terribly focused on its desktop customers either. They are focused on competing with the third major player in this market. Do you know who that is? Hint: they already gobbled up a company called Connectix for its virtualization technology. Ring a bell? ;-)

While I can't rule it out, a merger between VMWare and SWSoft is unlikely. A more imminent possibility would be a buyout by M$, which probably has these two companies tripping over themselves to try to position themselves to benefit from that eventuality, and that might explain why they don't appear to give a rip about their customers.

 

I have noticed some people's posts go unattended, but in my experience, every problem I have had has been promptly solved and attended to by Parallels.

Like Hugh, I also volunteer some time in the forum, and most of the time the issue is simply configuration! Which is certainly not Parallels' problem.

Onto people who are not attended to, look at the information you provide in your post, does it clearly outline everything that the forum recommends? If not, try outlining all the relevant information like the sticky I wrote recommends. This is free support and not part of the software package.

 

Eru, can only agree .........

 

The problem I'm having is that Parallels' networking conflicts with the KeySpan USB Server extension. They have known about it for a year. For a while they were whining about how it's not their fault. Now they're not doing anything at all.