Review Parallels Desktop For Mac

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Installing Parallels Desktop on a Mac is pretty straightforward. After purchasing the product users will get a download link, and from that moment on everything is smooth. Users will still need to sign up for a Parallels Account, though, to register their product. Parallels 10 is packed with virtualization features and full support for Windows 10. High annual upgrade costs hold it back, but it’s still a fantastic piece of software.

Picked by Techconnect's Editors

Desktop 12
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Mac users are fortunate to have not one, but two excellent commercial virtualization software packages to choose from, not to mention less-polished free alternatives like Virtual Box. In what has now become an annual ritual, VMware and Parallels have updated their respective Fusion and Desktop products to coincide with the recent release of macOS Sierra.

Last year, both companies delivered ambitious new versions to capitalize on back-to-back debuts of Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan, but the 2016 editions are somewhat more subdued by comparison. VMware marked the occasion by launching Fusion 8.5, a maintenance update with no new features.

Having celebrated its tenth anniversary for Desktop earlier this year, Parallels encouraged engineers to come up with at least one unique new feature to justify the upgrade to version 12, although the company’s usual relentless innovation produced a mixed bag this time around.

Open the Toolbox

Ironically, the marquee feature of Parallels Desktop 12 ($100 one-year Pro Edition or Business Edition subscription; $80 Standard Edition one-time purchase; $40 Student Edition one-time purchase) isn’t part of the core software at all, but a bundled standalone application called Parallels Toolbox (sold separately for $10) which is installed via Preferences. Toolbox consolidates 20 common, everyday tasks into a single menu bar window, making them easier to find and use.

These tools offer one-click simplicity for downloading or converting video, recording audio, muting the microphone, or performing system tasks such as locking the screen, hiding the desktop, preventing your Mac from going to sleep, and Do Not Disturb, which temporarily pauses notifications and Dock activity. Convenient? Yes, but none of the utilities are particularly special or unique, and power users are likely to have their own alternatives already installed.

Others are grouped into categories, providing functionality for taking screenshots, screen recording, archiving files, or managing time. I found the stopwatch, alarm, timer, and date countdown in the latter group particularly handy, since I typically defer such tasks to my iPhone or Apple Watch. Toolbox strictly works on the host OS—it has nothing to do with enhancing Mac, Windows, or Linux virtual machines.

One unfortunate side effect of Toolbox is that you’ll now have three separate Parallels icons taking up space on the menu bar: one for Toolbox, another for Desktop (when it’s actually running, of course), and a third for Parallels Access, the company’s $20 per year remote access service (included with annual Desktop subscriptions). There’s clearly room for some consolidation here, and the individual tools also add icon clutter to Launchpad, but at least they can be organized into a single folder there.

Always ready

If you spend an equal amount of time in Windows and macOS, Parallels Desktop 12 offers a number of welcome enhancements. Performance has been boosted across the board, with 25 percent faster access to shared folders and snapshots, and noticeably speedier suspend and resume—under five seconds on my 27-inch iMac Retina 5K.

VMs can now be configured to launch automatically when your Mac starts up, leaving them paused in the background while idle to avoid consuming valuable CPU time. (Remarkably, this continues to work even after quitting Desktop.) Located under Startup and Shutdown in the Options tab, “always ready in background” is accompanied by a handful of custom settings that determine how VMs behave when launched, closed, or shut down.

Parallels Desktop Review

One of my biggest Windows 10 pet peeves is the heavy-handed approach to automatic updates. I don’t use Windows daily, so it every time I launch Parallels Desktop, performance is degraded as updates start installing in the background. The new Maintenance option allows such tasks to be blocked until the scheduled time, such as a weekend when my iMac isn’t in use. (VMs must be open at the time.) PD12 includes one year of free online storage (500GB) from Acronis, which can be used to back up your virtual machines.

Nov 13, 2018 Reinstalling Parallels Tools in the VM didn't help. We also tried to assign.jpg and.jpeg to open in Adobe Photoshop on the Mac side, and got the same thing, where even though we select Adobe Photoshop (Mac) the Windows default app for the file extension setting actually changes to 'ColorSync utility (Mac)'. Parallels for mac setting. With Parallels Desktop, you can switch between Mac and Windows without ever needing to reboot your computer. If you have already installed Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, or Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp, you can set Parallels Desktop to run Windows from the Boot Camp Partition or import Windows and your data from Boot Camp into. Parallels Desktop for Mac – Installation and Setup. This tutorial walks you through downloading and installing a copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac and setting up a virtual machine in which to install Windows XP. Download Parallels Desktop for Mac at. In a typical installation, Parallels Desktop runs locally on a Mac and provides a virtual environment for the Windows operating system (OS). That makes it possible to run Windows-based programs either side by side with Mac-based applications or within a dedicated space isolated from the Mac environment.

Desktop 12 also makes using Windows on the Mac more seamless. Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents in Safari can be configured to open in their respective desktop Office 365 applications, and passwords entered in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge can now be saved in your Mac keychain.

Last but not least, Parallels offers independent screen resolutions for multiple displays. In full-screen mode, my iMac runs Retina Display resolution, while the adjacent 27-inch Thunderbolt Display works as an extended 2560 x 1440 desktop, each in their own Space. (Sadly, there are no independent settings for backgrounds.)

There is at least one area where Desktop 12 takes a step back. Contextual menu shortcuts have been inexplicably removed from Control Center, which I always found quite handy for quickly reclaiming storage from my Windows VMs without having to open the Configure window.

Bottom line

If you already have an annual subscription, installing Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac is a no-brainer. Although the new Toolbox utilities aren’t compelling enough on their own to justify $50 for a perpetual license upgrade, the performance improvements and macOS Sierra support certainly are.

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Desktop 12
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Pros
- 20 bundled Toolbox utilities for one-click common Mac tasks
- Big performance gains
- Always ready in background option for faster launch times
- Schedule Windows 10 maintenance, software updates
Cons
- Toolbox adds third Parallels menu bar icon
- No more contextual menu in Control Center
- Promised macOS Sierra Storage Optimization support missing

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$79.99

Pros
Fast performance in testing. Tight integration with guest OSes. Effortless installation. Flexible file and folder tools. Options for opening Mac files in Windows apps. Can install macOS virtual machines directly from the Mac recovery partition.
Cons
Some Mac-integration features can be confusing or impractical until you turn them off. Only runs on a Mac, so you can't share guest machines with Windows or Linux users.
Bottom Line
Parallels Desktop is an excellent way to run Windows apps on MacOS, especially for ordinary users. It's fast in testing, offers tight integration between Macs and guest systems, and supports many other OSes, too.

Parallels Desktop is the fastest and friendliest way to run Windows apps on a Mac for the majority of users who are likely to want to do so. IT pros may prefer VMware Fusion; expert users who want no-cost apps will prefer the open-source VirtualBox. Hardcore gamers may prefer Apple's Boot Camp, which lets users boot directly into Windows, with the added bonus of native graphics card support. For most ordinary Mac users who prefer Windows versions of apps like Microsoft Office or AutoCAD, however, or who use Windows-only apps like CorelDraw or WordPerfect Office, Parallels Desktop is the clear first choice for virtualization software.

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Platforms and Pricing

Parallels Desktop supports all Windows versions since Windows 2000, all Intel-based macOS versions (with some exceptions for licensing reasons), many flavors of Linux, BSD, Solaris, and a few other OSes. VMware Fusion and VirtualBox are even more flexible, and can run historical curiosities like OS/2 and NeXTSTEP. Also, unlike Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion and VirtualBox have versions that run on Windows and Linux machines, while Parallels Desktop is Mac-only.

There's one other important difference: Parallels Desktop is a subscription-only product, so you'll have to pay $79.99 per year for the home-and-student version or $99.99 for the Pro Edition. VMware Fusion has a one-time cost (a model some consumers may prefer) of $79.99 for its standard version and $159.99 for its Pro version. VirtualBox is free for personal use and $50 for corporate use, but you get far fewer convenience features out of the box with this open-source product.

Get Started With Parallels

Parallels starts up with a menu for creating a new virtual machine or opening an existing one. This is where Parallels' focus on ordinary end users shines best. Unlike all other virtualization apps, Parallels doesn't expect you to have a Windows or Linux installer disk or disk image ready when you start it up, although it can use that image if you have one. Instead, Parallel's user-helpful menu lets you buy a Windows 10 download directly from Microsoft, or simply download a Windows 10 installer if you already have a license key.

Another set of options lets you install a Parallels system-export utility on your Windows PC, and export it to Parallels via a network (slowly) or an external drive. Windows 7. A scrolling list at the foot of the menu lets you download specific versions of Linux or Android, install a virtual copy of macOS from your Mac's hidden recovery partition, or install Windows from a Boot Camp partition if you have one.

Like VMware and VirtualBox, Parallels supports a Snapshot feature that lets you save a guest system in one or more configurations that you know works well, and then restore a saved configuration after making changes in the system that you don't want to preserve. However, Parallels is unique in supplementing this feature with a Rollback option that automatically discards all changes to a system when you shut it down, so it works like a kiosk system, returning to its pristine condition every time you power it up. This feature can be invaluable in testing, or in environments like schools where users are liable to leave systems a lot messier than they found them. If you used Microsoft's long-abandoned VirtualPC app, you'll remember this feature, and will welcome its return in Parallels.

Parallel's Performance

Compared to VMware, Parallels starts up Windows at top speed in testing. On my vintage 2015 MacBook Pro, Parallels boots Windows 10 to the desktop in 35 seconds, compared to 60 seconds for VMware. VirtualBox matches Parallels' boot speed, but it performs far fewer integration tasks while booting up. For example, VirtualBox doesn't provide printer integration and the ability to open Windows files with Mac apps and vice versa.

One reason for Parallels' bootup speed advantage is that Parallels uses an emulated PC BIOS that supports the Fast Startup option, and the others don't. The speed difference isn't nearly as obvious when running Windows apps after the OS starts up, however. Parallels feels slightly faster than its rivals, but not drastically so. Fast as it is, Parallels won't satisfy hard-core gamers because Parallels, like VMware Fusion, only supports DirectX 10, while VirtualBox only supports DirectX 9. Parallels for mac vpn drive mappings windows 7. There's nothing that Parallels can do about this limitation, which is the result of the Mac's limited support for OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) features.

By default when Parallels runs a Windows system, any files on your Mac desktop will also appear on your Windows desktop. This may sound convenient, but it's a feature that I always to turn off in Parallels' settings dialog. One reason I turn it off is that it leaves the Windows desktop cluttered. Another is that much of what I keep on my Mac desktop—like folders and apps—simply won't work when I click on them in Parallels' Windows desktop. Parallels tends to go overboard with integration features, turning them on by default whether you want them or not.

Another way Parallels goes overboard with its integration is its tendency to clutter up its dialogs and your Mac system with icons and folders that you probably don't want. For example, by default, it adds a folder full of Windows application to your Mac's dock, and a Parallels menu to Mac's menu bar—though you can turn these off by poking around the options and preferences windows. Some of Parallels' menus include links to a set of Mac-related utilities called the Parallels Toolbox; some of these utilities, like a quick disk-cleaning menu, are convenient, but you probably don't want all of them, and they have nothing to do with virtualization. Another link on Parallels' menus invites you to buy Acronis True Image backup software, which you probably don't need if you use your Mac's built-in backup features.

Parallel Computing

Anyone who wants to run a Windows app on the Mac should choose between our two Editors' Choice apps, Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. For IT managers, developers, and for many tech-savvy users, VMware is the best choice. For most home, school, and SOHO users who don't need VMware's unique cross-platform support and legacy features, Parallels Desktop is the fastest, most hassle-free way to run Windows apps on a Mac.

Parallels Desktop 10 For Mac

Parallels Desktop (for Mac)

Bottom Line: Parallels Desktop is an excellent way to run Windows apps on MacOS, especially for ordinary users. It's fast in testing, offers tight integration between Macs and guest systems, and supports many other OSes, too.

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