June 9, 2006
I've just about got things set up the way I want now. Parallels Desktop is a sweet piece of software!
I have Windows XP installed for all my office-related processes (email, calendar, general documents etc) and Red Hat (RHEL4 AS) for a localhost deployment environment - and of course OS X for IM and general development.
Here's a screen shot of the three operating systems living happily side-by-side (click for larger):
Comments
How is the performance with all three OS running side-by-side?
Posted By Peter / Posted At
6/9/06 8:48 PM
Man, you make me jealous! :) What resolution do you have the WinXP instance set to in that screen shot? It looks pretty high, but it's hard to tell.
Posted By Jacob Munson / Posted At
6/9/06 9:11 PM
everytime when i use parallels and add the tools it screws up my install, grrrr
So i am being ultra evil right now and downloading *puke* vista beta to see just how bad they are trying to rip off os x and to see if it runs on parallels
Posted By dave / Posted At
6/9/06 9:37 PM
Peter, pretty darn good. Since, in general, activities are only happening in one O/S at a time you don't notice much of a slow down. When both guest O/S are running, Parallels is using around 20-30% CPU when both are "idle" (despite the fact that 'top' claims they are using that much each!).
Jacob, the screenshot is a cheat: I used Grab and Timed Capture and then hit F9 (Expos￩) to show all my windows at once. I actually have the OS X screen at 1440x900, Red Hat at 1024x768 and Windows XP at 1280x800.
Dave, sorry to hear about your woes with Parallels Tools. It worked like a champ for me (running it only after Windows XP SP2 was fully setup and logged in and updated).
I have my OS X home directory and Eclipse workspace shared (as network drives under Windows XP) which works wonderfully.
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
6/9/06 9:53 PM
This might be the nail in the Windows coffin for me since I could run my Flex tools until the MAC version is ready. :)
Posted By Stacy Young / Posted At
6/10/06 11:36 AM
Stacy, yes, I am just starting to play with Flex Builder 2 for the first time now that I have a Windows system to run it on... It's very nice :)
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
6/10/06 11:41 AM
I just realized that the output of 'top' is a bit confusing (to me) since this is essentially a dual CPU machine. That only came home to me when I (re-)installed MenuMeters (from Raging Menace) and it shows two CPU graphs!
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
6/10/06 12:14 PM
Sean,
How did you set up your networking for parallels? I installed Windows 2003 server and put CF on it, but I can't seem to figure out how to get at it from OSX. When I use Bridged Network, Windows gets its own IP address from DHCP and if I look up what it is then I can use that, but that only works when I have a DHCP server available. If I use Host Only Networking, then it never seems to get any IP address and I don't know how to talk to it.
What setting did you use for Red Hat so you can access it via localhost from Windows XP like it appears you are doing in your screen shot?
Thanks.
Posted By Steve House / Posted At
6/10/06 12:33 PM
Just a heads up that if you're planning to buy Parrallel's, then now is a good time to do it. They're raising the final version of Desktop for Mac to $80 rather than $50 because they added server compression technology. However, they do still have the "pre-release" pricing for $40 if you get it now. That's a 50% savings that's well worth it!
Also, as a complete new guy to Macs, I notice that everything is on one huge partition. Do you guys set up your machines to have multiple partitions? It "feels wrong" to have everything dumped into one partition but it's a whole new way of thinking for me and I'm still messing around.
Posted By Dave Carabetta / Posted At
6/12/06 5:43 PM
What is the benefit of multiple partitions? I thought Windows only did that because in earlier releases you couldn't have a single disk of more than a certain size?
Why would I not want my entire disk as one partition?
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
6/12/06 8:18 PM
I always partition ...and keep all my files off the smaller system partition. That way if I need to blow away the OS I don't need to worry about files all over the place.
Posted By Stacy Young / Posted At
6/12/06 8:20 PM
As Stacy is alluding to, partitioning gives you the ability to separate your data from your applications. This way, if something becomes corrupt (i.e., the Windows registry is corrupted), a re-format of the application partition doesn't touch your data files and it's relatively clean. I think you'll find that this is a common practice in the Windows world.
Even in our Solaris and Linux deployments, we logically partition our data files from the applications. So /opt/ tends to be where JRun itself would be installed, but a user-created partition called /data/ is where the web root resides.
Again, I realize that OS X has no concept of a registry, but there are other reasons why a re-install of the oS might occur, i.e., an upgrade from 10.4.x to 10.5.x goes awry. For that reason, I was curious as to what experience Mac users do to separate their applications from their data, if anything.
Posted By Dave Carabetta / Posted At
6/12/06 8:56 PM
Stacy, Dave - yes, I guess I can see the benefit with Windows since stability is an issue.
I don't know anyone who partitions their Mac tho'. I've never needed (nor used) partitioning on any Mac I've owned over the last fifteen years. I've done countless O/S upgrades on Macs over the years as well...
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
6/12/06 9:56 PM
personally since my mbp only has a 100gb harddrive I keep all my big photo files, itunes and alias my webroot to an external drive but thats mostly to save space. The thing new mac converts have to remember is that its pretty rare that the system will crash and you can't get back into it, it's NOT windows (tg). If you are worried about "what if" then you can clone a good osx install and put it on an external drive or small usb drive incase you need something to start it with to be able to go in and get your valuable info out without loosing it.
Posted By dave / Posted At
6/13/06 1:24 AM
Dave, I definitely agree about the Mac stability, considering all the things I've heard. However, my question is necessarily about outright system crashes so much as the ability to take clean backups of certain folders. I don't really care about the applications themselves, as I have the re-install disks for them. However, most programs tend to store their associated data files in a sub-directory of the application itself. That's what I was curious about as far as separating data from the apps. I'd like to take advantage of the online data backup offerings such as Carbonite (Mac support doesn't exist yet, but services like this is my point), and I don't want to backup iTunes itself -- just my music library.
Posted By Dave Carabetta / Posted At
6/13/06 10:04 AM
Dave, Mac applications tend to store their data under your home directory, not under the application directory.
/Applications contains the apps.
/Users/{username}/Library contains the data (mostly - some apps store it elsewhere under your home directory).
~/Library/Application Support ~/Library/Preferences etc
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
6/13/06 1:41 PM
Ahhhh, OK. So Apple used common sense then? ;)
That makes a lot more sense now. I've been searching Mac's help and OS X web sites, and that was a key bit of info that I hadn't stumbled upon yet. Thanks Sean.
Posted By Dave Carabetta / Posted At
6/13/06 2:05 PM
well Dave I wrote out a big long post about back ups. The main thing is that a mac is NOT a pc and you dont have tons of hidden files and folders everywhere. If you want a good way to find all the parts of an installed program you can of course use spotlight to find them or I use a program called appzapper, really it's make to uninstall programs but I use it to find the paths to the programs folders.
Here it is as an example for finding the folders for a dw install: jamwerx.com/appzapper.png
Posted By dave / Posted At
6/13/06 3:08 PM
Dave, thanks for the appzapper heads up. I'm looking into it...
Posted By Dave Carabetta / Posted At
6/13/06 3:20 PM
Hey Dave... nice work here. I also have Parallels up and running on my MBP and it is successfully operating WinXP Pro SP2 with only ONE issue. I cannot, no matter what I do, get Windoze to see an external drive (I have tried FireWire and USB with both Windows Formatting and Mac formatting).
What can I do to fix this issue? Any ideas?
Posted By Brien Tomassetti / Posted At
7/3/06 1:35 PM
Brien, I haven't specifically tried a USB hard drive but on my system Windows XP recognizes most every USB device its been shown so far. I don't think Parallels supports FireWire.
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
7/3/06 1:55 PM
Thanks Sean. Yeah, I figured the FireWire recognition was a moot point. Still trying to figure out how to get it to recognize the USB drive though... arghh.
Posted By Brien Tomassetti / Posted At
7/3/06 6:37 PM
Hmmm... seems like Windows sees the drive when I plug it into the USB port after Windows is launched in Parallels. However, I get the message that it will operate better if I plugged it into a 2.0 USB Port... gee, that's what I thought this MBP had (it does). Evidently, Parallels cannot define the USB ports as High Speed 2.0 ports.
So, after I get the message, nothing happens, Windows does not show the drive anywhere. I even installed MacDrive... nothing.
Any ideas?
Posted By Brien Tomassetti / Posted At
7/3/06 7:12 PM
If a 2.0 device won't run in 1.x mode, you're out of luck I think...
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
7/3/06 7:57 PM
Try this. Plug in your USB drive after Parallels' Windows session boots. Get the message saying it will operate better if plugged into a 2.0 port. Right click on the USB icon on the lower right of the screen and toggle External Hard drive on and off. Windows should begin to recognize the drive. I had the same problem on my USB drive and my 1.0 compatible drive worked. As mentioned, it will recognize the drive and say it's installed and ready to use, but you will not see a drive letter on a 2.0 USB drive. something to write to Parallels about...
Posted By reirand / Posted At
7/12/06 12:11 AM
Does anyone know if and when Parallels will support firewire? Is there an update comming? Really need it working...
Posted By Damerau / Posted At
8/18/06 7:21 AM
I am still having trouble transfering files between OSX and XP running in Parallels emulator. There is Parallels Shared Folder, but I am not able to drag and drop or copy files to the XP environment. Any tips? Thanks.
Posted By justin / Posted At
8/19/06 4:14 PM
@justin, contact Parallels support and/or read through their forums.
I have the PSF set up to mount my OS X home directory and my Eclipse workspace directory onto XP. Inside XP I can explore those two directories by opening PSF from the desktop and then drag'n'drop files between OS X / XP.
Note that OS X can't see the guest O/S file system.
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
8/19/06 4:32 PM
I have a MacBook Pro laptop with a 800 firewire external drive. But the drive won't show up in windows-xp. What can I do to use the drive in windows.
Thanks Bob Nelson
Posted By robert Nelson / Posted At
9/8/06 10:49 PM
Who can tell me how to fix this? After I install Parallels Desktop for Mac, then try to open that, but doesnt work at all.
Posted By benny / Posted At
9/11/06 6:42 AM
@Bob and @benny - I suggested you contact Parallels support: I've found them to be very helpful.
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
9/11/06 11:41 AM
Sean, I have try already, but not help. Still the same.
Posted By benny / Posted At
9/12/06 10:48 PM
I've just gotten a new MacBook and am planning on purchasing Parallels. Could anyone recommend a good place to pick it up? Also, is it possible to simply click and drag files (or cut and paste) from one OS to another? Finally, can I use Parallels in addition to Bootcamp? If so, am I using up more system resources?
Thanks in advance, Shane
Posted By Shane / Posted At
10/8/06 1:45 AM
Shane, the Parallels website is a good place to buy it - http://parallels.com
Parallels lets you install a Windows package that lets you share OS X folders into Windows as network mounted folders - you can drag'n'drop files between Windows and the network mounted OS X folders.
You do not need Bootcamp if you have Parallels installed. Bootcamp lets you select between O/Ss at startup, with Parallels, you boot up into OS X and then start Windows - and they run at the same time. Having said that, you will not get quite the same performance from Windows running under Parallels because it is relying on the chip's virtualization (whereas Bootcamp is running Windows fully native).
Your choice depends on whether you want both O/Ss running at the same time and want to switch between them "live" (use Parallels) or whether you only ever want one O/S running (use Bootcamp).
Hope that helps?
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
10/8/06 1:47 PM
Thank you sir, much appreciated!
Posted By Shane / Posted At
10/9/06 3:30 AM
I am a bit of a novice to this but have a MacBook and have installed Win XP and Parallels.
I thought after installing Parallels Tools I would be able to drag files directly off one desktop (Mac) to Windows or vice versa.
Was I right or do I have to go the Shared Folders route?
Many thanks!
Akbar
Posted By akbar / Posted At
10/13/06 10:15 PM
Akbar, you have to used the Shared Folders. Parallels uses a virtual hard drive so OS X can't actually see it. Windows XP on Parallels can see just the Windows drives - which includes the folders mounted via the Shared Folders configuration.
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
10/14/06 12:03 AM
Many thanks Sean. Will go ahead as you suggest.
Akbar
Posted By Akbar / Posted At
10/14/06 12:41 PM
My dell laptop video card died, made switch to macbook pro. Can I use the hard drive from my dell w/ windows xp on it already and run it with parallels so I don't have to have it on my mac ( I have it in a drive enclosure, making it essentially an external hard drive)? Thanks.....I'm a total mac rookie
Posted By steve / Posted At
10/14/06 7:52 PM
I very much doubt it Steve. As I said, Parallels uses *virtual* hard drives which are files on OS X that are internally formatted by Parallels.
Perhaps all you folks with questions should just go download the trial of Parallels are try it out for yourselves?
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
10/14/06 8:19 PM
Hello all,
I love Parallels for running Windows XP on my MacBook Pro - but I have one issue.
Is there anyway to remove the shared folder icon from the desktop?
Every time I either rename it, or delete it, it always comes back after a while. This is very annoying.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Posted By scot / Posted At
12/3/06 6:15 PM
scot:
to remove the shared folders icon goto the Parallels Tools Center (system tray in XP) > Shared Folders > uncheck "Place shortcut on desktop"
Posted By spoon / Posted At
1/14/07 11:28 AM
Hi,
My wife is an Architect and I am looking to buy her a macbook pro. She needs to use Autocad adn 3d studio max.
Please can you tell me if Prallel or any other windows simulation system will allow her to work as if using a native pc (yuck!)?
thanks so much.
Raoul
Posted By Raoul / Posted At
4/23/07 4:58 PM
@Raoul, Parallels will let you install any version of Windows as a "guest" operating system on a Mac. You can then run both the host Mac OS and the guest operating system at the same time. With "coherence" mode, you can have the Windows applications running just like regular Mac applications, launched from the Mac dock with no Windows taskbar or desktop. Very nice. You will need to buy a copy of Windows (as well as Parallels) so you have a legal license.
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
4/23/07 5:39 PM
I have been using Macs for years and I recently upgraded to the MacBook Pro using Parallels and Windows XP.
I am frustrated with how slow my system operates trying to use my Mac and Windows at the same time.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Posted By Bill / Posted At
9/25/07 3:33 PM
You need a lot of RAM to run both operating systems at once. I have 3Gb in mine. The new MacBook Pro lets you have 4Gb which I highly recommend.
Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted At
9/25/07 6:17 PM
Parallels 3.0 running on Macbook 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM performs exceptionally well for me. I'm real excited with this software. I just switched from a Windows PC to a Mac and I love the Mac but I lost the ability to use my Pocket PC and Dell All-in-One Printer, but with Parallels installed and XP Pro as the guest OS my old hardware is back in action! I love it so far.
Posted By John Friedman / Posted At
12/6/07 11:45 AM
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