How Good is it?

Discussion in 'Parallels Desktop for Mac' started by jbrowdy, Jul 8, 2006.

  1. jbrowdy

    jbrowdy Member

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    I can't wait

    I can't wait to get my Intel mac- waiting for tax free holiday in August. Looks like Parellels is the way to go. Anyone ever heard of Articulate Presenter? This is one app I'd like to run on my machine. If someone who has parallels up and running is interested, I'd love it if you would download a trial version of Articulate Presenter and test it on their VM. It's a free trial version. It would really help me!

    Thanks! :)
     
  2. Olivier

    Olivier Forum Maven

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    What vpn issue?
    I have no issues connecting my company vpn, either from OSX or from XP/parallels or even both at the same time.
     
  3. jbrowdy

    jbrowdy Member

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    Vpn

    I don't actually know, I've just read of a lot of issues, including those in this thread.
     
  4. Olivier

    Olivier Forum Maven

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    Vpn

    Okay, I don't use any CISCO vpn. Only Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server included vpns. Works nicely.

    The article you pointed me to is not very clear and mixes different and completely unrelated things.

    For instance, why is there any discussion of successfully or not connecting the vpn in Mac OS X? Wether it works or not under Mac OS X depends on how good or bad Cisco supports Mac OS X. It is totally unrelated to using that VPN from within XP running in Parallels.

    Just run XP in Parallels and ensure it has Internet connectivity. Nothing complex here. It generally just works. Then install your vpn software in that XP like you would do on a distinct PC. Start it and connect. That's all. Well at least with the XP vpn client. But as Parallels doesn't do anything special to support this software any differently than any other, I see no reason why the cisco vpn client wouldn't work.
     
  5. jbrowdy

    jbrowdy Member

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    That would be nice- hope it works well when I buy the machine!
     
  6. ivel

    ivel Member

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    Seems like it works fine...didn't try anything fancy though...

    HTH,
    -Levi
     
  7. jbrowdy

    jbrowdy Member

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    Thanks

    Great. Thanks so much. Did not seem choppy or slow?
     
  8. ivel

    ivel Member

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    NO... but parallels doesn't seem choppy at all to me.

    HTH,
    -Levi
     
  9. seven

    seven Bit poster

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    Looks like everyone's having a good time with parallels but me. I recently decided to convert after watching numerous videos about parallels and virtue working beautifully together, and got myself a 2GH white macbook topped with 2Gb mem (from crucial, passed memtest). Installed virtue and parallels...still worked great. Installed a guest os of xp, then problem... As soon as xp starts, virtue chokes taking 3-5 seconds just to change desktops, osx generally runs slow, and xp runs *miserably* slow. Any ideas, tips, anything??? I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.
    Thanks.
     
  10. jbrowdy

    jbrowdy Member

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    I've seen various recomendations on how to allocate memory- you might look around, but most seem to think you should devote most of your memory to OSX and much less to XP.

    Let us know what you discover.
     
  11. seven

    seven Bit poster

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    Thanks for the tip. However, I don't think I allocated too little memory to osx. I have 2GB physical memory and allocated only 768MB to xp, which means osx had well over 1GB. Out of the box, it had only 512MB and osx did pretty well with it.

    Anyway, following your suggestion, I found this and this. I did a little experiment and got some strange results---on my macbook (2GH white, 2GB mem), only 512MB for "Reserved Memory Limit" gave me a good performance. Anything other than 512MB performed so badly in my case. I posted my results here for detail.

    Thanks again.
     
  12. ppayne

    ppayne Member

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    In short, very good

    For anythiing that you did Virtual PC with (i.e. general stuff, non games), it's fabulous. I had an issue where a game I was debugging didn't work in Windows 2000 with Parallels, and I was preparing to give up and use a real PC, when on a lark I tried XP with Parallels and it worked fine. So for non-game, non-"super hardcore" uses, you are really looking good with Parallels.

    That's not to say it's all perfect. Sound stil cuts out for me after a certain point in my one game. I would like to see Parallels boot off the Boot Camp volume, for maximm convenience for us all (choice of how to boot, and needs only one XP license).
     
  13. jbrowdy

    jbrowdy Member

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    I read that booting off bootcamp partition was coming- anyone know if that is true? Also, a lot of positive reviews for parallels are coming from people that are using it for IE or Office. Anyone using any apps that require RAM or processor speed (other than games)?
     
  14. vico

    vico Bit poster

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    blackberry, how?

    hello hhwong,

    how did you acomplish to sync your blackberry?, i do own a 7280 and have not been able to make the VM see it, not once.

    regards, thanks

    vico
     
  15. HappyMacSwitch

    HappyMacSwitch Junior Member

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    I just want to put in my 2 cents on my happy MBP. I am also a long, long time pc user, after buying laptop after laptop because of all the problem it was giving me. After hearing my buddy telling me about Paralells, I walked right into a Apple store and got myself a MBP 15 inch, eversince then, I am as happy as can be. I run all my windows app on XP and do all my surfing and email on the apple side, didn't even bother to install antivirus on windows side because of antivirus just drag your system down. If I can switch, any one can too, do it, do it....
     
  16. jbrowdy

    jbrowdy Member

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    Happy Switcher

    Hey HappySwitcher,
    That's cool news. I switched about four years ago, and I love it. I am on the verge of buying a MBP to make my life easier.

    What is the most processor intense app or RAM hungry app you are running on the windows side, and how does it run?

    Thanks.
     
  17. hhwong

    hhwong Member

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    It's flakey -- I plug my 8700 in and then you have to go to the USB icon on the lower right hand side and "activate" it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You have to try to turn it off and on a few times to make XP see it.
     
  18. >>> Message has been deleted by the user <<<
     
  19. vico

    vico Bit poster

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    blackberry, how?

    will try that, thanks.

    vico
     
  20. nhand42

    nhand42 Member

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    I had issues with Cisco VPN from a Windows XP guest OS - it was unreliable and slow - until I upgraded the Cisco client software. It has been rock solid ever since.
     

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