Parallels Coherence: Possible have windows desktop icons on Mac OS X desktop???

[ruel]

We have just started using Parallels 3.0. We downloaded and tried the demo trial version and then we went to the local Apple Store to buy the software. I have a question and will probably have more questions in the future. Please excuse me if this is a dumb question that is already answered elsewhere.

We are using Parallels with Windows 2000 on a Macbook which is running Mac OS X 10.4.11.

QUESTION: When you turn on Coherence in Parallels, is there a way to have the windows desktop icons to automatically appear on the Mac OS X desktop screen?

Thank you for all useful answers.

 

[MaximS]

You can put whole Windows Desktop on the Mac's one.
Use Applications->Show Windows Desktop

 

[ruel]

Thanks. Is there a way to keep it permanently there? It goes away. I would rather have the actual windows desktop icons on the macosx desktop, but having the windows desktop covering the macosx desktop is better than nothing.

Otherwise, it looks like we have to forget about Coherence mode and instead go with the single window to try to keep the windows desktop in place. Related to that is another question: Is there a setting to keep the single window in place on each startup of Parallels? Sometimes it seems that Parallels would stay in single window on startup of Parallels while at other times Parallels would boot Windows into Coherence mode when Parallels had Windows in single window mode when we had the Macbook turned on previously. Parallels seems to keep Windows in single window mode when going into suspend as you shut down the Macbook and later turn on the Macbook, turn on Parallels which then wakes up Windows immediately into the single window. But on a shutdown of Windows, and then later turning on Windows with a new boot under Parallels could sometimes result in Coherence mode instead of the single window. Is it not remembering what it was before, or is there a setting that will make it "stick."

I ask these questions because we have users in my family who get confused when things don't start up the same way all the time and can't remember to click either (1) View, Single Window or (2) Applications, Show Windows Desktop. I can do all that extra clicking, but if you can understand how non-technical older users can be, then you can understand how extra steps (albeit simple to more technical people) can confuse people who could forget them.

Maybe I'm missing something. If it's in the manual, I'll have to go through the manual again. Thanks for all useful comments.

 

[MaximS]

You can choose the Parallels startup mode in menu Edit->Virtual Machine...->Options->Booting->Startup Mode. Select "Coherence" there.

If you want a Windows desktop to be visible all-the-time you should use "Full Screen" mode instead of "Coherence". This will be like "no Mac OS X exists at all" and your Mac works with Windows only.

 

[ruel]

You can choose the Parallels startup mode in menu Edit->Virtual Machine...->Options->Booting->Startup Mode. Select "Coherence" there.

Thanks.

Going through the manual after reading what you are saying, I also see there is the option in that booting startup mode for selecting "Single Window". That should solve everything where we can just have "Single Window" be what boots up all the time. Specifying that "Single Window" boot all the time using that setting to make that setting stick would solve our problem to have the windows desktop icons all the time.

We can forget about this lack of windows desktop icons not being on the actual macosx desktop when in Coherence mode.

If you want a Windows desktop to be visible all-the-time you should use "Full Screen" mode instead of "Coherence". This will be like "no Mac OS X exists at all" and your Mac works with Windows only.

Thanks for that suggestion also. We went with Parallels to get away from the Bootcamp-windows fullscreen experience. It'll be faster with Parallels, but it's a user experience/behavior thing at this point for my folks who love the mac environment. We have the mac dock moved over to the left side of the screen with the windows start button and the windows taskbar towards the bottom of the screen. Rhetorical Question (that you don't have to answer): Why go fullscreen Windows on a mac when you paid a combined amount of $1200+ for the Macbook and Parallels when you want to ALSO see the Mac OS X environment?

Oh well. Whatever. No use bumping my head against this anymore.

So I'll just turn my questions about all this into a possible feature request for the future: Maybe the official Parallels folks can take these concerns in mind for future versions of Parallels -- that is, when in Coherence mode which is otherwise very elegant, it would be nice to have a way for the actual Windows Desktop Icons (the ICONS, not the whole windows desktop, get rid of the windows desktop) appear automatically (all the time) on the actual Mac OS X desktop when in the very elegant Coherence mode.

I understand the options you have described. Thanks for the clues and tips for what to do with what's available.

 

[Ravachec]

If you have leopard, put spaces into good use.

The way I have it setup is to have parallels fullscreen in one of the spaces. Then I have ctrl-arrow setup to switch spaces.

This way you're 2 keystrokes away from switching between OS-X and Windows Desktop.

 

[ruel]

Thanks. That's a great tip. I'm sure that users who have Leopard could use your tip. As mentioned in my first post, we have 10.4.11 which is Tiger on our new Macbook. Can Tiger do Spaces? (Boy, I don't know if my folks could take to flipping back and forth between Spaces....) We still have to send in $10 to Apple to get the Leopard upgrade.