How about a new Beta with 3D?

It must be time by now to let us play with the VMware killer?

Surely if those folks can put out a half baked Beta of Fusion supporting DirectX, the talented folks at Parallels can offer something to the early adopters to play with.

3186 has been boringly stable for me, and running perfectly... and this forum is filling up with kvetchers that spend half their time looking for an "any key", and the other half calling tech support for help finding their IP addresses.

If you gave us a nice experimental Beta, at least people could bitch about something relevant, eh?

Thanks in advance!

 

How about getting a decent stable version that works for everyone and some decent support first ?

 

Could my point be made any more clearly then that?

I run 2 copies of 3186 side by side on a mac mini, both running FC6 as virtual web servers... running great, very stable (albeit light load of course).

I run XP on a daily basis for .NET development, and it runs Oracle 10g... amazingly fast, faster then the server farm at the large corp I dev for (sadly).

I haven't had a parallels crash in I don't know how long.

I even took an old Biztalk on Windows 2003 VMware image from Windows (ugh, I know, don't even say it) and ran it through the transporter, and it booted in parallels, and ran perfectly... ??? I could not believe it. It was impressive to say the least.

And finally, since that worked so well, I took an old Windows 2000 Dev Environment image from VPC and transported it too... once again, it ran in parallels faster and better then it ever did.

Parallels is just an impressive piece of software, and the best VM solution I have used, and I have used them all (even that - gulp - QEMU - <shudder>, it was the early osx86 era, what can I say, I was desperate).

What in the hell are people doing to #@#% up their parallels so bad they have to bitch constantly? Randomly deleting files in /System/Library?

How about ignoring the hopelessly lost complainers and getting your sane users a new toy to play with?

 

Are you using any of the following on a regular basis:
1. Bootcamp
2. USB
3. Coherence

If not, then it's not surprising Parallels is stable for you. If you are using these 3 and still not having problems, then consider yourself lucky. Because just about anyone using the 3 above for real work will have problems related to stability and/or performance and/or resources consumed.

Which is why I don't use any of the 3 and accordingly why my XP and FC5 VMs work just fine.

However, Parallels is marketing the hell out of those 3 features and it's attracted lots of press and lots of new users. Unfortunately, those 3 features do a disservice to the otherwise outstanding Parallels product.

Parallels need to bring those 3 features up to their own standards before going for 3D. And i really don't think it would take that long.

 

Bang on VTMac!

I use #2 on occassion for a printer, but that is all. The other two never really interested me... your points are valid though, they are marketing the hell out of coherence.

I am sure they are working on both stabilization and 3D, all I want is a chance to play with their internal builds a bit - I am not suggesting they should stop bug fixing on the GA branches

Just a quick poll of the forums, and I notice a lot of the complaining is not related to the 3 features you mentioned. People talking of going back to 1970??? Crazy talk.

There are only so many intel mac models, how can it run so well for us, and so poorly for them? Could the problem be behind the keyboard?

I wonder, could it maybe be that there are a lot of people running hacked pirate copies of XP out there, with old outdated drivers, and this is the cause for all of the BSOD-ing?

 

Parallels works fine... as long as you don't ask too much

If "by now" you mean "I want this now so you should have it now", then sure...

Yeah, those morons over in VMWare who have been doing this sort of stuff for ages. What do they know?

Which, as you later explain, is largely explained by the fact that you are doing nothing to push the app in any way... you know, like using the main features that they are pushing

Wow, that's a large steamy pile of manure you're shoveling, isn't it?

Yeah, there's nothing Parallels users need more than some bleeding edge features (like, say, Coherence) before basic functionality (say, like USB2) is consistently working.


I'm trying to sync my Palm to WinXP, and I still have to do the same thing:

1) press the HotSync button on my Palm

2) Switch to Parallels

3) Turn Coherence off and go back to an OS Window

4) Click on the USB icon and tell it to attach to my Palm device

5) Cancel the HotSync on my Pam

6) Start the HotSync again

How about we save adding support for games until we get the basic work tools functioning?

 

I use Bootcamp and Coherence for XP Pro on a MacBook Pro C2D for developing under Visual Studio 2005 and Borland C++Builder 6 and haven't had any issues since about build 3106 and I use it nearly all day most days for development.

But I did do a fresh install of XP with about build 3120 or 3170 so maybe that has helped?

Cheers

Russell

 

I think they work great. I've been using heavy USB and Coherence for the last couple months since I develop Windows Mobile apps with Parallels (hint that requires really heavy constant USB action). Just this past week I moved all my Parallels stuff to an external drive, then ran BootCamp. I actually had to Carbon Copy my disk to the external and back since BootCamp wouldn't let me repartition (couldn't move some file). I did a fresh install of XP and installed all my software. Immediately I setup a new VM using Bootcamp.

So far, I have zero problems and its all working perfectly. I am not getting crashes, all my USB stuff works, and Coherence even works. I think all the people having issues are those that have remnants of betas and complex BootCamp installs and all that. Parallels needs to do a better job cleaning up between betas.

On the other hand, I do not like the slow startup of a bootcamp based VM at all...

 

The fact that you use a Palm speaks volumes Mr. Flame... steamy pile indeed.

Doing nothing to push the app eh? I am sorry you are having trouble getting your little "notes to self" to sync to your Outlook, or whatever... but I think running Oracle 10g and doing software development is "pushing" just a bit harder mr. high roller. Using it for a virtual server, actually servers, that houses your SVN repos, web server using FC6 and having two simultaneous VM instances running on the same box 24/7 might also qualify.

But if you meant: You are not messing around with the most obtuse of the possible usage scenarios, like trying to use a VM and an entirely different OS just to manage your PDA - you are bang on.

Why on earth would someone even own a Mac if they wanted to use Windows in a VM for their PDA and Email?

Just run Windows ME natively on a Dell dude.

 

Actually, if you re-read my post, I said stability and/or performance and/or resource. If you are using USB and you have less than 45% CPU at idle, I'd love to know the trick. 45% at idle is simple unacceptable. It is rediculous. I've been writing OS level software for 20 years. If I tried, I'm not sure I could intentionally create something that bad. Coherence is a pig and significantly impacts both CPU and general responsiveness when scrolling. Not that it is surprising given they have created a neat little haxie to mask out out the background.

USB stability seems to be entirely a function of the device you happen to need to use. Bootcamp, in my testing, performs slower than a Parallels VM and because they necessitate stupid things (like no password at login) in order to get their automated stetup to work correctly, causes all sorts of problems for less sophisticated users.

These features are all close. They just need refinement. Which Parallels history says won't happen if we see a new beta real soon.

 

Its Windows! What do you expect?

I know there is a performance issue between 1970 and 3186/88. I myself had an XP VM that I started to use in RC versions and it was horribly slow. I think XP can only handle so many reinstallations of VMTools. When the public release came out I started a new VM and it actually runs faster than the previous.

I think people need to stop bitching and realize that hey its just Windows. We all know a Windows Reformat and Install happens once a year at least. Parallels can only get their drivers as perfect as windows is (which is not that perfect compared to Unix-based OSes).

Bottom line, make a new image and you'll be fine.

On to the next version of Parallels w/ 3D and ACPI support. 3D support will be awesome and that ACPI support will be great too, then my mac mini will actually sleep when the VM is open too.

 

I'm not using Bootcamp, but using USB and Coherence together has been quite stable for me. Just my two cents.

 

I wish it were as simple as "it's windows". Sure that's a nice cop-out. But guess what. I'm running Linux - Fedora Core 5 - and see the exact same rediculous CPU consumption.

It's not Windows. It's a poor implementation of USB support. The only thing I can think of that would cause CPU utilization to be that different between when USB is enabled and disabled is a piece of driver code that is polling. Anybody who knows anything about system level code will tell you polling is evil, unless you're trying to duplicate the efficiency and responsiveness of Windows 3.1.

They simple need to fix the code.

 

This is absolutely hilarious! 3D will be on 3.0.

However how can you talk about betas for 3.0 when Parallels hasn't even decided on their final release of 2.5 yet. Is it 3186 and/or 3188?

Probably some time next week they're coming out with 3190 AND with NO release notes AGAIN.

 

Is it really hilarious? Avoid Dave Chappelle then, might be life threatening.

I think everyone pretty much knows 3D is coming in the next version - I think the clue was their announcement about that - and maybe the fact old Ben promised it for last Xmas already.

Beta is just a term. It is a euphamism for "interim build", or daily build, or snapshot. In ancient times it used to mean software had reached a level of stability and feature completeness such that it could be released to the community at large. However as we have seen from companies like M$, Beta pretty much means - if we can get the damn thing to compile, you can have it, cause free testing is the right price for us.

Hell you can have 5 Betas, then 4 Release Candidates... if you release one every 2 weeks that pretty much means you can start with the build right after GA as Beta1 no? Crazy, but as true as it is funny.

Parallels seems very iterative, so I imagine they can drop a Beta at any point and have it be more or less an incremental on their existing version (provided they aren't in the middle of some hardcore refactoring). It is likely they aren't "big A" agile though, as their software actually works (I think that violates Kent Beck's cardinal rule - working software is a thoughtcrime, or something like that). However, I do expect they have a tight short release cycle from what I have observed.

Why exactly does it matter whether the "official" release is 3186 or 3188?

People talk about going back to 1970 - do you install Windows 2000 when XP bugs come up too? Well, you probably do... off you go then. Hey, it's the 2nd Saturday of the month, time to re-install the OS.

Those are build numbers - and they increment for a reason - it vaguely, but not exactly linearly, relates to progress. If 3190 comes out and is more has bugs that 3186 didn't have, then hopefully they will release 3192 shortly thereafter.

Granted development builds tend to be unstable, and in many cases you need to stick with something where the jello is settled down a bit - but all this 3170/3186/3188 stuff seems silly. People saying they had to re-install OSX after build XXXX - well, I know people like that - the pretty much have to re-install the OS everytime their favorite blog site is down.

3188 if it is posted is likely the "official" 2.5, if that actually matters. And by now there is a 3192, or 3200, and they are compiling in the 3D they have been working on for many many months - and all I was getting at i the original post is that some of us - certainly not all of us - might be prepared to play with it and have a go... My experience with parallels betas, builds or what-have-you has been great.

If yours hasn't - who cares? This is post was never intended to be an invitation to randomly bitch.

That, evidently, is what 98% of the rest of this forum is for.

PS. yeah parallels could be optimized a tad with regards to CPU, and maybe the USB driver does poll... oh well, you got 2 cores man... it'll get fixed eventually. And when it does it will be a yawn... 3D is a tad more interesting then optimized USB drivers.

 

Beta is not a 'euphemism' for stuff like that. A snapshot build can be tagged as anything from alpha to release. It may not even compile. Beta traditionally just means it's compiling and is feature complete. It does not imply stability or suitability for releasing to community - there's a good reason why the concept of 'closed beta' or 'internal beta' exists. The one that implies such things is called Release Candidate. This is why Firefox releases have had several RCs and the last RC just turns into an actual release.

However, I do agree with your remaining points, minus the juvenile spelling of MS. Companies have mangled the term 'beta' so much that in many cases it's actually what's equivalent of ALPHA (damn it, if your feature set is still changing, it's not beta yet!), to something that's pretty much RC to GA (Google falls into this one).

 

Stop being a self-praised snob. And please stop bitching about your "experience" too. "Best VM solution"? Ignorance is bliss....

 

Hmm... that reminds me. Parallels came out fairly close to the Intel Mac's first release - April 6 vs January 10, respectively. Three months wasn't that bad considering Apple originally claimed June 2006 timeframe for first Intel Macs. I ordered an Intel Mac mini the day it came out, and I did resort to Q (the OS X port of QEMU) during that period myself. This free software was fairly usable, but mouse pointer trapping wasn't available (this is working on current version) and of course, x86-on-x86 emulation was slow (virtualization kext still not ported as of yet).

When Parallels first came out, it was pretty fast compared to Q, obviously, it was pretty lacking in features and compatibility. A year later, it's finally usable for me. But I think it has a long way to go still, and I'm not talking about 3D support.

 

SOME of us HAVE to use our Palms under Windows because the software they need DOES NOT WORK WITH THE MAC OS.

I use several applications on my Palm that are essential to my being able to do my job, and several of them don't support the Mac OS.

 

i'm curious to knwo why you purchased a mac, if windows use is essential to your job ? (not starting an argument or trying to be smart, i'm genuinely interested in peoples selection criteria for buying Mac)