I have used Parallels 2.5 almost since it came out and have always viewed it as a necessary evil because I am not a Windows fan. I use it for Quickbooks, Microsoft Street and Trips, and a little Access database (and Solitare). The new Fusion product came out, claiming to be less of a drag on system resources--cpu usage, etc. and while there may be a percent or so difference, I don't really see anything compelling there. Performance, startup, restore etc. seem mostly similar to P2.5 Parellels 3 was originally met with indifference at best, but the long list of supposed improvements in build 5160 make it look pretty good. Unfortunately the list is not quanitative, saying things like "Significant CPU usage improvement" etc. I come here and see that 5160 seems to have introduced its own problems. Is there anyone here who is delighted with their migration from 2.5 to 3, and which build of 3 seems to be the best? Like others, I don't like the sense of being duped by developers that release digit upgrades for a fee, but which are really just maintenance releases.
I use 5160 on my imac 2gb with windows xp with no problems. And it is fast and hasn't crashed once on me. Some have reported problems, but I have had none.
I have no major problems with 5160 on 15 inch MBP with 3Gb RAM. It is in general fast and my complains are mostly annoynaces: The communication with Mac drives is slow... CPU load when using USB devices is still higher than I would like (much lower than it was, but higher than it should be IMHO). I haven't tried lately, but previous betas of 3.0 kept crashing after some time when I was using MS Street & trips with the USB GPS gizmo. Very annoying, but I do not expect the emulator to work with every USB gizmo there is. And this was my problem on version 2.5 also. But it is emulation and much better than any previous I have seen. It lets me do most what I really need and nudges me to replace my WinXP software with Mac software... J.
