Windows Virtualization (WinXP under Mac OS X) Beta Released

[Stridder44]

From MacRumors:

Parallels released http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/ their Windows virtualization solution for the Intel Mac today. The product is called Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta and a free fully functional copy is available for download now.

Unlike Apple's Boot Camp solution which was released yesterday, Parallels solution allows you to run Windows XP (and other Intel-based operating systems) from within Mac OS X. Rebooting or Dual Booting is not required. This allows users to maintain their daily environment while also being able to use any desired Windows applications. It is only available for the Intel Macs and should provide near-native performance.
Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta for Mac OS X is NOT simply a "dual-boot" solution; rather, it empowers users the ability to use Windows, Linux and any other operating system at the same time as Mac OS X, enabling users to enjoy the comfort of their Mac OS X desktop while still being able to use critical applications from other OSes.

Parallels appears to be taking advantage of the Intel Virtualization Technology which was included in the Intel Yonah processors that are now shipping in the Intel Macs.

While in free Beta testing at the moment, the final software package for Linux and Windows is priced from the company at $49.99.

[Qion]

Well, I guess this is a better solution than dual-booting. I still don't care much myself, but people who would like to run the occaisonal game or Windows-only app would find this much more beneficial than having to restart into another OS, then having to restart into OSX.

I would still like to see a cube effect when switching between OS's. That would be helpful, because it would employ the entire screen for each OS, and it would look freaking sweet.

[chadwick]

Well, this little tool does seem to work really well. Feature wise it's about equivalent to what Microsoft's Virtual PC was for the PPC, but of course it isn't slow.

It's missing some of the power-user features that VMware has, like snapshots, shared folders, etc., but otherwise appears very good. Install and setup was a breeze.

[Jason]

How's the speed?

[chadwick]

Good, zippy. About what I would expect. I ran a benchmark inside of it and its comparing to between a 1.6 GHz p4 and a 2.0 GHz p4, so that's not bad at all.

I've got two XP VMs running at once simultaneously with no problem.

[scruffy]

I don't know if you could really do the snapshots etc. of VMWare - the OS is running directly on the hardware, with just a hypervisor underneath it, rather than a whole virtual machine with another OS under that.

Still, very cool - I'm actually thinking about getting a copy of Windows. Weird to contemplate...

[mindbend]

I installed it on a 20" iMac with 2 GB ram and a 256 MB video card.

In terms of CPU performance, it's plenty fast. But the lack of a native video driver really kills it. I'm not expecting to play video games or anything, but I personally get motion sickness from the low FPS cursor.

I tried the BBC h264 footage from Apple.com. Plays back a little jerky, but is mostly watchable. I assume the lack of native video card support is hurting performance there. I'll have to try it in native XP on the same machine. I'm sure it will be plenty smooth. That was the 420P footage. The cursor got super slow (like 2 fps) while the video was playing.

Playing a WMV inside PowerPoint was horrible. The movie played slowmotion instead of skipping frames to kep up. Playing it in the windows media player outside of explorer played reasonably well. This is a setback for me because what I really need this for is to develop PowerPoint content for my Windows clients (no, the Mac version is not compatible enough, nor does it support WMV, so I have to use the Windows version of PPT at some point in the process). Video playback inside PPT seems decent as long as you don't play the PPT in full screen/presentation mode.

And does anyone know how I can get internet access via Airport in this thing? I don't know Windows well enough to know how. It seems like maybe you can only access the internet via the hard wired ethernet port, right?

Also, how can I set up a network connection to allow my virtual XP to connect to to my Intel Mac hard drive or some other shared volume so I can easily move files to and from XP virtual machine to OS X? I know almost nothing about networking in XP. I would need step by step instructions as I"ve tried in XP but don't know what I'm doing.

Also, I can't get audio to work, yet Parallels' blog page indicates that audio and wi-fi is available I think.
http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

[scruffy]

It might be worth trying the Windows drivers for Mac hardware that come with boot camp - download bootcamp, burn the drivers CD, and then just install those drivers in XP.