14 DAY TRIAL // Parallels Desktop for Mac has been updated with tons of improvements, as well as tweaks and bug fixes. Parallels 5.0 is a paid upgrade (from versions 4.x and earlier). Existing Parallels customers can upgrade for $49.99. Version 5.0.9308 is free for Parallels 5 license holders.
Generally speaking (Virtualization changes), the team of developers at Parallels Inc. has improved the USB mass storage performance, fixed an issue where SMP Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 virtual machines migrated from Parallels Desktop 4 crashed on startup, and fixed an issue that displayed a black screen on startup in Windows 2000 virtual machines that supported the Intel EPT technology.
Next up is the “Mac OS X Server guest operating system.” According to the changelog, the ability to pass kernel options to the Mac OS X Server guest OS has been included. “To do so, enable the ‘Select boot device on startup’ option in the virtual machine configuration: it will enable you to specify the necessary kernel options in the five-seconds timeout before booting the kernel,” the team of developers behind Parallels Desktop explains.
As for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger hosts, Parallels Desktop crashed on startup in the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger host OS, in some instances. The new version should fix this issue, as well as a few possible problems with connecting USB devices in the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger host OS. A number of UI fixes are also mentioned in the release notes. Those are listed below.
- Very slow Parallels Desktop 5 startup on some computers – fixed. - Artifacts in Quartz animation after applying changes to Undo Disks and some other actions – fixed. - Visual artifacts when switching to Full Screen in some machines – fixed. - Possible application crashes when switching to the Crystal mode with VoiceOver turned on – fixed. - Problem with quitting Parallels Desktop via Dock icon > Quit when Virtual Machines List is not closed – fixed. - Problem with some dialogs staying in background when accessed in the Crystal view mode – fixed.
For the Parallels Transporter, Parallels Inc. has improved the performance of virtual machines migrated from VMWare Fusion to Parallels Desktop. An issue where Aero was disabled in the Windows 7 virtual machines converted from VMware Fusion 3 to Parallels Desktop has been fixed. Migration via the Parallels USB cable when the source computer's USB port is a USB 1.1 port has also been resolved.
Probably the most important area where changes have occurred is the graphics segment. Multi-monitor support has been added for Windows and Linux guest OSes. DirectX 9 Shader Model 3 DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 3 is now supported for Windows virtual machines. OpenGL 2.1 support for Linux guest OSes: applications that require OpenGL (up to version 2.1) can be used in Linux virtual machines.