I had abandoned using the previous version of Parallels because of no support for Vista boot camp partitions, and was excited about the forthcoming 3.0. I just spent the $50 to upgrade and I have to say that I am very disappointed. The boot camp support for Vista is not good - each time you switch from boot camp to Parallels, new ACPI drivers are installed forcing a reboot. Essentially, you have to start Parallels twice each time you come back from boot camp. In addition, Vista requires reactivation when you start your boot camp partition in Parallels. I imagine that once activated, it would require reactivation for boot camp instead. Looks like my anticipation was for nothing - the new version of Parallels doesn't support Vista boot camp images properly. Not wanting to throw good money after bad, I'm saying good bye to Parallels once again - I doubt that I will upgrade again having been burned twice! Good idea ---- bad execution. Sorry, Parallels!
Vista needs reactivation inside Parallels because it's essentially running on a new machine. I don't think there's any way to avoid this if you're going to use a virtual machine. As for the ACPI drivers, I'm having the same problem, but apparently the Parallels developers are aware of this: http://forums.parallels.com/thread13725.html
