P5 release 5.0.9308

Been playing with yesterday's update some more (demo version only as the German one, which is my install's language, isn't yet available for download). I'm running Windows 7 on a memory-challenged MBAir (2 GB Ram, 1.6 GHz processor(s)).

Speed: The Windows Experience Index has dramatically increased, due to the Aero index having jumped a lot. Nice job! I briefly tested my favourite games yesterday and things run smoothly, if not more smoothly as before (hard to tell, I don't have any particular benchmarks - but Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War (I) runs very nicely). Windows animations (grow, shrink a Windows window) are very smooth now. I get a 4.2 on the Aero index, while the previous Parallels version gave me 2.9.

Sound: The sound driver that comes with the updated Parallels tools is fine now, no more scratchy sound. I dumped the Realtek AC'97 driver that I used before.

Memory: My impression is that whatever is going on in the background there's less swapping. I switched my VM back to 768 MB (I had it at 896 before) so that I have a little more memory on the Mac side. However, Parallels still hogs memory: Reserved memory on the Mac, is 1.3 GB for this 768 MB machine with 128 MB assigned to the Graphics card.

From my point of view these issues have not been resolved:

Mouse: Turning off "Smart Mouse" still causes the cursor to disappear in many games when run in full screen. Viz. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War (I) and Battle for Middle-Earth.

Keyboard mapping: Mapping CMD to the Windows key does not allow me to use "Windows-tab" to enter Flip 3D. I still need to use CMD-Tab-1. Weirdly, I have even unchecked that mapping in the Parallels general preferences and it's still happening. Switching to the "General" keyboard mapping scheme causes all kinds of havoc; one issue is that hitting ctrl-alt to release the mouse no longer works reliably.

Resolution switching: My VM is set to switch the Mac's screen resolution to whatever its own resolution happens to be ("Adjust Mac resolution in full screen" = on). This is ok during Windows startup. When I play a game in 800 x 600, though, and then leave the game, the Mac's resolution stays at 800 x 600 - and since I'm running Windows in full screen, Windows now also runs in 800 x 600. This does not happen after I set the Parallels coherence service not to load during Windows startup. This is the same behaviour that I saw in the previous version of Parallels 5.

All else seems fine. Keep up the good work! (But please please please do introduce multilanguage releases of Parallels, it's not that hard, all you need to do is add the languages - I don't like the fact that I'm currently working with a demo serial while I have a valid Parallels key; I bought the product on the day it was released).