WAIT TO BUY/UPGRADE Parallels if you're planning on installing Yosemite?!?

I just upgraded to v9 because it was on sale. I just realized that I might have to upgrade again when they get it working in Yossemite which will likely be another $50 even though I just upgraded yesterday.

I submitted a ticket asking if there's a grace period on an upgrade. They skirted around the question and wouldn't give me a direct answer. I sell software and normally the grace period is 3-4 months. I kinda feel like I was hosed.

So I wanted to warn potential buyers who plan on doing the free upgrade to Yosemite (which is a lot of people - the OS is great) to WAIT before upgrading/buying Parallels as you may have to pay to upgrade again - and the upgrades aren't cheap compared to paying full price.

 

This is par for the course - Parallels has always done a pay for it upgrade for each major update of OS X. I would expect to see a Parallels Desktop 10 release shortly after Yosemite is released.

 

I'm sorry, but this info is misleading.

Each version has had 2 years support, so when Mavericks came out, both 8 and 9 where updated to run on it (not 7). As such, following the same logic, when Yosemite comes out, PDM 9 will be updated to run on it, if it needs to be updated to run, but 8 probably not (I don't know if PDM8 will, without any modification, work on Yosemite when it comes out).

 

Thank you for the clarification. It's good to know I won't have to upgrade again in 4 months.

 

I have a Mac Mini running OSX Server Mountain Lion. I have installed Parallels 8 and am running a virtual machine with Windows Server 2003.I haven't upgraded yet to Mavericks because of the Parallels installation. Can I just upgrade to Mavericks OSX Server edition without changing the Parallels installation? Or -- if I upgrade to Parallels 9 now, will it still support Windows Server 2003? Am I then likely to be able to upgrade to Yosemite when that comes out w/o further upgrading the Parallels?

 

My recommendation, considering the 2 year support policy and the eligibility for upgrade price (up to two prior versions), is to upgrade every two major versions. In your case I would skip PDM 9 and wait for the next major version.

Windows Server 2003 Guest is supported in all these PDM major versions and I don't see why it would be dropped in the next major version, here's the list of supported OSs in PDM 9: http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/#tab4

PDM 8 (in it's latest minor version) supports both ML and Mavericks.

What I would do: Backup everything first, make sure I was running the latest version of PDM 8 by checking for updates, then update to Mavericks, if you get any trouble running PDM 8 after upgrading to Mavericks reinstall PDM 8 (again, using the very latest version of 8 available, you can download it from the site, links in my signature).When Yosemite comes out wait to see what Parallels has to say about Yosemite support and if there's a major version of PDM coming. If what happened last year holds true, PDM 8 might not run on Yosemite and won't be updated in order to be compatible (end of 2 year support cycle), in that case, if you want to upgrade to Yosemite, THEN you should consider upgrading Parallels to the latest major version available.

 

Agree with holding off buying V9 until after Yosemite is launched. I could not get direct answer from Parallels if they would provide free upgrade if I purchased V9 now so I am going to wait. You would think that we would be given some assurance of free upgrade if we purchased V9 now.

 

AFAIK, historically that time frame hasn't been bigger than 1 month before the release of a new version.

 

Good idea. I should have done the same rather rather than jumping on the v9 sale but as long as v9 gets compatibility with Yosemite I'll be fine. There hasn't been any "must have" features of Parallels that have made me upgrade, just compatibility.