Parallels Review

[Disclaimer]
This might be in the wrong section but I could not find any other section that is more suitable for my topic. Note: I do not need any help and this is more of a feedback rather than an issue

I've been using Parallels 7 for about a year or so now. So far, I have no issue with the app and I would give it a 5 star rating. Recently, Apple released OSX Mavericks for free. Now, usually, these's updates are paid upgrades and this is the first time it is for free. Now, I would gladly upgrade to OSX Mavericks however, Parallels has been an important part of my daily usage. Since Parallels 7 is not supported in Mavericks, I could not update unless I fork out another $50 buck (which is more like $60 in my currency). Being a student, I do not possess such funds and this has lead to my conclusion. In addition, I find the notion of support the 2 latest products ridiculous as after I purchase Parallels 7, Parallels 8 was released and a year later 9, hence rendering my relatively young product obsolete. Even until today, Microsoft is proving extended support for Windows XP and I don't see them following this rule.

Parallels is a good perhaps even a great app. However, I regretted recommending to my friends to buy it as they, similar to me, are unable to afford the update as we have limited cash on hand. I would caution against new comers who are considering to buy it, as my product was deemed obsolete only after about 1 year or so.

The bottom line is, Parallels is a good way of integrating OSX and Windows together, but it's only worth it if you can afford to pay and extra 50-60 bucks (depending on your geographical location). I hope this review helpful to who ever is planing to buy it and to the current users, if you like to share your views, I'll be more than happy to hear them

 

while i'm loathe to defend parallels, i do feel the need to point out a couple of things:

1. parallels is a company. releasing new software costs money. if they were the size of apple / microsoft, they could afford to give away copies of their product gratis. however most developers understand that to keep stay in business, we have to charge for our efforts. so we generally give "upgrade" pricing. instead of requiring our users to purchase another full-price copy, we provide it at a discount as long as the user has an older copy. so the decision has to be made - stop writing software and only support customers up to a certain level of operating system, or support new features available in newer OSes and stop supporting legacy. it's a trade off, and sometimes users get caught on the wrong side of the fence.

2. yes, microsoft "supports" xp to a degree. the last update to the software was 5 years ago. it's not being marketed, it's not featured in hardware builder's advertisements... it's only "supported" in the sense that it's not deactivated / dead. in this regard, parallels 7 is the same. it's still running on your older OS.

3. you forgot to rant about apple not supporting PPC binaries meaning you had to upgrade all those old System 9 applications you have laying around.

anyone know how to get hypertalk installed on mavericks... damn

*i write this as a parallels users since the first release. i used PD up to 7, then saw no need to upgrade to PD8 as it was running well and i was happy. if i could run PD7 under mavericks i would. however, it doesn't, so yes i was "forced" to upgrade. do i wish i could stay with PD7 + mavericks? of course. but that's not how it went down, so i upgraded.*

 

For the OP, one thing to do is probably wait until PD9 becomes available in the various popular Mac App bundles. Eventually it will appear in there, usually cheaper than a new copy of Parallels Desktop, and sometimes with some other half decent apps.

This also has the advantage that it is a new license, and so you end up with a legal copy of both, if you don't want to just pay up now for the upgrade.

There are always alternatives to consider like VM Ware Fusion, but I don't think it's any less expensive - Users of that did seem to get fixes and improvements quicker though, probably with VM Ware being a bigger company - I believe Retina Displays were supported notably quicker for example.

I may be "forced" into a PD9 upgrade as I want to be able to use external monitors for multi display setup when coding, so may just have to stump up the cash.