Parallels 4 Breaks Your Windows Keyboard - WARNING: DO NOT UPGRADE UNTIL THEY FIX IT!
Parallels 4 completely changes the way the keyboard works with Windows, and now Parallels has ownership over CMD+W, which, as everyone knows, Windows uses to close windows in both the OS and in applications.
There is no way to override or fix this. It's belongs to Parallels now under the File menu. When you hit CMD+W, Parallels asks you if you want to quit the virtual machine. I can't believe it. Nobody would use the "Close Window" keyboard shortcut anyway since it's a bad idea to quit your virtual machines from Parallels and not using the virtual machine's OS to shut itself down. Why would you make a keyboard shortcut to do this in the first place, and why would you use one of the most common keyboard shortcuts to do it?
It doesn't end there, you can't just simple set CMD to equate to CTRL in Windows. You have to manually set every single keyboard combination you want it to convert. CMD+A = CTRL+A, CMD+X = CTRL+X. Parallels comes with some of these, but not all.
The way the keyboard conversion works in Parallels 4 is entirely different than Parallels 3, and the fact that it blocks one of the most common keyboard shortcuts in Windows (CTRL+W) with absolutely no way to reassign it, means that Parallels 4 BREAKS your keyboard.
Parallels, take your useless CMD+W command out of the File menu, and go back to the simple, straightforward keyboard management of Parallels 3. It wasn't broke, so why did you try to "fix" it? At the very least, make it so I can just assign the CMD key as CTRL and not have to map every single keyboard combination.
I have to revert to Parallels 3 because I give presentations on this machine going back and forth between OSX and WIndows and I use CMD+W constantly during these presentations.
If you're trying to get me to download VMWare and transfer my virtual machine to it, you're doing a great job convincing me with Parallels 4.
Last edited: Nov 13, 2008