I know you always promote the fact that different people will find different hardware and different software best suited to their tasks. But rather than paying $80 for Parallels, I would suggest first going to http://www.virtualbox.org and trying xVM VirtualBox. It doesn’t sound like it has all the features of Parallels (yet) but it has the advantage of being free. It also allows you to run not just any version of MS Windows but also Linux, Solaris, and just about any other OS you can think of or remember. And the virtual machines you build are portable to any of the other host OS’s VirtualBox runs on. Just a suggestion.

Rick, I can’t really tell until I use it a while but frankly I don’t use it much while mobile. I believe it is referring to the “Parallels” power setting that is now available to Vista and the docs say it uses the Mac’s power management even in Parallels. I don’t have VMWARE so I can’t compare it.

James,

Can you comment on the “improved battery life” claim of the new version?

How does it compare to VMWare Fusion in this respect?

Great work. I gonna give it a try

Thnx

I own both Parallels and Fusion. But I don’t think I’ll pay (again) to upgrade Parallels. Unless it’s totally spectacular and has really reduced it’s footprint. I normally use Fusion, as I’ve found the video performance a bit better.