Parallels Desktop update - wish I had an Intel Mac!

Let’s face it - joking aside, I’d like very much to get Windows Vista on my Mac with Parallels Desktop. Ian uses Windows XP via Parallels on his first-gen MacBook Pro and it’s a fantastic tool.

The first time you push the hotkey, and your Mac OS X desktop rotates away to reveal Windows XP you can’t help but laugh like a megalomaniac.

The power! Muahahahahaha! *Ahem*

Ian uses it mainly for Visual Mind, Zinc, Internet Explorer testing and presenting our PC-only projects. I have to admit, a spot of Half Life 2 would be nice, too

There’s always been a bit of a fly in the ointment though. You can’t use the Boot Camp partition you created (for restarting under when you need every bit of speed you can squeeze) as a virtual hard disk drive. You’d have to install Windows and your apps all over again inside Parallels, which frankly is a completely ludicrous waste of hard disk space.

But soon no more! Woohoo! Other treats include drag-resize the window and your virtual machine automatically changes screen resolution, drag-and-drop between OSes, “coherency” which apparently displays Windows apps as running processes inside OS X (in the dock and such I assume) and the performance boosts that come with any self-respecting update.

I look forward to getting a MacBook Pro in a year or so with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and Windows Vista Home Premium (MS demand Premium for virtualisation). Ha, maybe I’ll stick Kubuntu in there for a giggle