Parallels 6 on Mountain Lion - Supported?

Virtualbox still working a treat, not found any problems using with Mountain Lion so far. The scales really have fallen from my eyes, VB really is a good product, even has a seamless mode aka Parallels Coherence, USB2 etc. minimal effort to get it up and running. I'm seriously beginning to think Parallels business decision has done me a good turn. Parallels has lost my business and I'm in pocket.

 

Ya, lately most companies are treating their customers like garbage. A lot of people in this forum are complaining and switching to another Virtual Machine program. I like Parallels and have been using it since v5. I really like their iOS app, where are the others don't have such a thing. If you think Parallels is bad, Apple killed of their most EXPENSIVE machines, the Mac Pro before 2008 from even getting Mountain Lion. So those people of they want ML will have to pay over $3000 to upgrade.

I personally don't think anyone should go to Mountain Lion, not enough features to make it worth going to, even at $20. Plus buggy install process for a lot of people, iMessage doesn't remember that you replied with another machine or iOS device. I am going to be going back to Lion, especially since one of my machines falls into the cannot install ML category but is still faster than an $2500 new mac.

So don't go to ML and keep Parallels 6. There are some nice features in 7, but again there is not a big reason unless you want to run OSX Lion or ML in a VM to go to 7.

 

Again, you completely ignore my and other people's main issue:

We were eligible for free upgrades to PD7 when you made the offer last year. Because we bought physical copies (and probably paid extra) and didnt run in to problems, we had no need to visit your site, and therefore missed out on our entitlement to an upgrade, as, despite you sending out eligibility emails to digital customers, and using advertising popups in the program solely for your company's benefit (even when disabled!), we missed out as you did not notify us of our entitlement! Thats awful customer service and bordering discrimination - you notified customers that bought direct but not those that bought from a third party you consider eligible (amazon, apple)!

How about, at the very least, giving us our entitlement to PD7 and not losing even more customers - ones that had you notified us properly, wouldnt even be considering leaving!

 

Did you register your product (which gives Parallels an email address so they can send offers and news, also keeps your license keys in your account in case you lose them)?

 

Yeah, and i had no emails from Parallels regarding a free upgrade offer, and I check my spam etc. I'm also not the only one, and from the way Parallels word their upgrade page, people who bought physical copies werent ever going to get notified, which is awful customer service

 

As mentioned by Parallels (they correct their original statement!) there was no FREE offer, except the usual one for buyers right in front of PD7 release.
The only offers send by email where the $29 one or 2 times.

 

As stated before, I purchased it during the period where I was eligible for the FREE upgrade, I haven't had it a year yet! I have checked the page several times since I found out to make sure I'm not being stupid. I know I was eligible now, I just wasn't notified.

 

The Amazon reviews will really hurt this company as they are seen by a much wider audience than any forum. If I was running Parallels (and I have run my own business's) I would be a very worried man at this stage and doing all I could to mitigate what is a disastrous PR exercise.

 

Excellent idea, the buying public needs to know the facts on how this company behaves.

 

Well it's very clear by now that Parallels is ready to let us v6 users go. I was kindly offered a 10% discount from support, but that's not a compelling offer IMHO.

I just want to run my PVMs on my current Mac. Crap, I'd downgrade to parallels v1 that I bought years ago if it would run on my Mac.

If us v6 users were offered the same discount as fusion users ($29 competitive upgrade) I would have stayed. And probably kept buying upgrades down the line when the features were relevant. The short term loss for parallels for the discount would have amounted to much more over the lifetime of the user.

Perhaps I'm just a small individual personal user and not buying large volumes via expense accts. But I'd like to think that we collectively mean something and should be considered when planning upgrade paths and requirements.

Farewell Parallels. And for you other v6 users in my situation, see you in the VMware forums!

 

4 x PD6 --> VMware

Transition was quite straightforward and new licence cheaper than PD7 upgrade.

-ESu

 

Liar

Here is an email that I received from you support two weeks after upgrading to pd6 because of lion. 3 weeks after upgrading, you came out with 7. You double dipped the early adopters- what should be you most important customers.

Here is the email:

Hello Robert,

Thank you for your reply.

We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Currently, this is what the best that we can offer you.

As the purchase was made before the grace period so we are unable to provide you with the free upgrade key of Parallels Desktop 7.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.



Thanks,
--
Pinky Kulshenge
Customer Support Engineer
Parallels

knowledge base: http://kb.parallels.com

 

Posted mine already. I see a lot of others have put theirs up too. For those who plan to post reviews, remember to be objective and not bratty. The bottom line in my opinion is that paid software suddenly stopped working, without warning, and unless you've got a recent Time Machine backup, there's no way to undo the damage without paying for an upgrade.

And people, please remember, you're not "sticking it to Parallels" if you go buy VMWare--they treat their customers the same way. If every ticked off Parallels customer buys VMWare, and vice versa, neither company really feels any pain for jilting their paying customers.

Just went through the process of importing my VM to VirtualBox. It lacks a lot of the frills PD has, but so far, so good!

 

Also, just wanted to add, in a few more posts, this will be THE biggest thread on the entire Parallels discussion forum, as far as I can see. Parallels, I hope you're taking notice.

 

Solution!

Cannot believe how tone deaf Parallels has been on this. I just read through all the comments and I'm, frankly, disgusted. This is how monopolies act, not companies with SEVERAL SOLID competitors, including one that is free!

So, on that note, here is what I did. I installed the VMWare free trial. As soon as it loaded, my Parallels 6 desktop appeared with an option to "import." I imported it and voila: everything works! Smooth, easy, fast! I will try this with virtualbox too and decide after 30 days. But in any event - BYE BYE Parallels. One more loyal customer gone forever!

 

after two weeks with Virtualbox, I noticed a few things going better on Parallels, but nothing real worthy for 50 euros.
Nevertheless, I am still checking this topic, waiting for some news from other ex-users.

 

Top of the iceberg

Of course salesmen of parallels are reading all these posts and they are just ignoring it. This is very disrespectful to clients who showed confidence in their product in the first place.

I HAD two mac's running with Parallels and after upgrading to ML, I lost everything that was running on Windows 7. Now I have to pay $ 100 to get it back. A sleazy way to sell an upgrade.

And you know that what you read here is just the top of the iceberg of what people think of your move. You must be loosing a lot of customers. Is it worth that?

You lost me too.

Bye, bye Parallels.

 

Yeah, I'm done. Like a few others here, I bought PD6 in July of 2011 and was never offered a free or even discounted upgrade to PD7. Just bought the upgrade to 10.8, and before installing I'm converting all my machines to VirtualBox (free and compatible, funny that).

I made the decision not to bother when I read that even Microsoft--MICROSOFT--are making office 2008 compatible with Mountain Lion. So one of Apple's biggest competitors will cover as far back as 4 years and Parallels won't go back ten months? Really, really poor business practices. Good luck with that.

 

I finally got an email back regarding my eligibility to the free upgrade to PD7 that I was entitled to. It basically said "tough, the offers expired. You should have visited the site in time. Spend $50 to upgrade"

I tried virtualbox but can't get the facetime camera working. Lights up but blackness. I am therefore switching to vmware. £30 for full v4, with upgrade to next version.

Whilst I am switching, i feel i should highlight that vmware has done exactly the same thing as parallels - ditched support for the previous version, which was released at roughly the same time as parallels, as were the upgrades. They seem as bad as each other really. Its just a cost issue for me

 

To Paralles:

Posted my review of your lack of devotion to your customers on Amazon.com less than an hour ago. Just received the following email from amazon:

"Your review helped another customer while shopping for 'Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac'

Not only did you lose me, you just lost a potential new client. Keep up the fantastic service! (ps since you seem deaf and daft, that was sarcasm! )