[dukkyone]

Just look at it. They are trying to charge you 10 more for a 1 year download period.

Just click the X that says remove and you will get it for 39. Then don't loose your disc image.

I got mine the first night for 39. And it is WELL worth it. The coherence mode is awesome now. It runs much faster on my macbook and looks great. I had no trouble with V3, just some dislikes which they fixed in V4. Most importantly when you plug in USB storage, it is available on both machines with no issues. V3 was funky when i used thumb drives, never sure where it would be available.

[dukkyone]

Wow, a lot of people are having trouble. My upgrade went flawlessly. Took about 40 min start to finish.
I got a bit worried about re-activating windows, had to dig for my Serial #. But when i clicked activate i didn't even need the number, it just connected and poof, i was done.

Super happy with V4 its faster, looks better, and works better.

[BigIslandMac]

I made the mistake of downloading and installing this upgrade. It was a disaster. I have never had a problem with previous Parallels updates, so I stupidly failed to back up my virtual machine. BIG MISTAKE. Parallels 4.0 converts the VM to a new format, which prompted Windows to require reactivation, no easy task because the mouse/cursor doesn't work properly in the VM window that pops up in the middle of the conversion, so trying to click on the buttons in the activation window is virtually impossible. I finally got past this glitch and ended up, about 15 minutes later, with an error message saying the VM could not be converted. Unfortunately, in its current state in can't be used by Parallels 3.0 either. All in all, a very frustrating experience. After this, I'm tempted to check out VMWare, despite always having been satisfied with Parallels 3.0.

[notacow]

Hey i want to now how well guild wars will run and if its playable with Parallels 4.0 with
a Mac Pro
Two quad core 2.8z intel exeon proceccer
4GB ram
ATI HD 2600 XT with 256mb video card

[lenbanks1964]

Most of us are just trying to get Windows to run. I gave up trying to convert my VM and just started from scratch with a new XP install. That failed after spending many hours on it. I am stupidly trying it again, but am almost ready to leave Parallels altogether.



Looking at their forums, it appears a significant number of people are having the same issues. This program should have never been released.

[wcf3]

I've finished upgrading my 3 Macs and five virtual machines all has gone well aside from the scary warnings, errors messages, and re-activation stuff. Everything is up and running very well actually. I will say the upgrade is a bit brutal, but the result is worth it...just make sure you back things up before diving into it, ignore the winblows messages, and just follow the Parallels messages. My wife and I are very happy with the upgrade. Again, make a backup so you have a fall-back solution...

Chuck

P.S. I'm a very happy VMWare Linux and Mac customer too; I just happen to prefer Parallels for some reason.

[whitedog]

{quote}But I couldn't get the web site to finish processing my purchase. I'll have to call them tomorrow.{quote}

A day later and their web site seems to be working better. I was able to pay for Parallels 4, at the discounted price of $39. I've made a point of buying both Parallels and VMWare Fusion at the sale prices offered to early adoptors. I got Parallels Desktop first (it was out of beta first) but when I began having problems with it I switched to Fusion. Eventually Parallels fixed the bugs. Nevertheless, I can't say I regret having both - though there are more copies of Windows to keep up-to-date. Parallels and Fusion keep leap-frogging each other in features, quality and stability. Parallels 4 once again has the lead, in my opinion. Indeed, this is the first version that looks like mature software - though 4 is still in beta, it appears to work just fine.

I agree with an earlier poster who mentioned that VMWare has been able to avoid charging for upgrades (so far) because they are a bigger company and can afford to underprice the competition in order to build market share. Still, Fusion is only at version 2 while Parallels is at version 4. One can argue whether the faster upgrade cycle for Parallels is justified, but both products are improving so quickly that comparisons are out of date not long after they're published. No doubt, this is because of the competition. I doubt VMWare would work so hard if they didn't have little Parallels yapping at their heels. And Parallels wouldn't have come as far as fast as they have if they didn't need to struggle to survive.

For this reason, though I have both programs, I don't have a firm favorite to recommend. Before Parallels 4 I used Fusion more often because, in my experience, it had better network performance and a more evolved interface. Now Parallels has jumped back in front. If you haven't already gotten one or the other, I don't think you can lose with either. If you're already using one, there is no need to switch.

Someone will probably disagree with my conclusions, though, so stay tuned. ;-)

[whitedog]

This upgrade of Parallels was certainly more challenging than earlier versions, no doubt about it. Though they might have done a better job of warning us, I suppose they were afraid it would scare people away from the upgrade. It's hard to say which would be worse from their point of view - frightening people away or the bad publicity from troubled and botched upgrades.

On the other hand, anyone who performs major software upgrades impatiently, without reading the fine print and doing a proper backup first, is going to get burned sooner or later, if not by Parallels then by something else. This lesson is as old as personal computers themselves, but most people don't seem to take it seriously until they crash and burn - and sometimes not even then.

And, don't forget, VM or no, this is Windows were are dealing with. I suspect some of the problems people have encountered have to do with problems in the Windows system they were converting. As I said earlier, the trouble I had was caused by security software that had to be uninstalled before the upgrade could finish. Some problems, like the security software, are foreseeable and, in my case, the Parallels upgrade application made allowances. I'm sure other problems are less manageable.

So far no one has mentioned whether they got any help from Parallels tech support. When I consulted them last year their responses were delayed and mostly unsatisfactory. Perhaps someone will tell us if their service has improved.

[vintagegeek]

Try to start up again. I received the same message about it not being able to convert and I let it plug along and everything was fine. Their messages are so inconsistent. You don't know what's fact or not.

[beluga1]

I wrote Parallels tech support 3 days ago about my problem of the VM upgrade process, basically, NOT being able to run. The website says they answer within 24 hours, but so far, not so much as a peep. I am starting to wonder if my problem has to do with some standardized virus message that Windows puts onscreen early on in the upgrade process, that you have to click on to move on. But Parallels doesn't know what to do with it, so it quits. I know nothing about Windows, and ironically, without Parallels working, i can't get to Windows to turn off whatever is botching up the parallels VM upgrade. Very discouraging, almost ready to throw it away. Makes me appreciate OSX more and more.

[notacow]

Again,
Hey i want to now how well guild wars will run and if its playable with Parallels 4.0 with
a Mac Pro
Two quad core 2.8z intel exeon proceccer
4GB ram
ATI HD 2600 XT with 256mb video card

[whitedog]

notacow said:

Hey i want to now how well guild wars will run and if its playable with Parallels 4.0 with
a Mac Pro
Two quad core 2.8z intel exeon proceccer
4GB ram
ATI HD 2600 XT with 256mb video card

Download the Parallels 4 demo and find out. Of course, If you haven't got your own copy of Windows (and Guild Wars) you're SOL. If you do try it, be sure to back up any earlier version of Parallels and the virtual machines you use with it. The upgrade has proven very tricky for a lot of people. And read the instructions carefully - a stitch in time saves nine.

[macaddiict]

I spent half the day upgrading my Parallels 3.0 XP setup to 4.0 hoping for the speed gains. Honestly, it seems much slower! Even after the painful upgrade process, multiple restarts of my Mac and the Virtual Machine ... it is much slower overall. Just wanted to put this out there for those of you who are thinking of upgrading for the speed alone. I have yet to see any other improvements, other than the way it looks. -Stephen

[Yosh007]

V.3 worked okay for me for the last year, but the upgrade to V.4 was such a disaster (couldn't even boot my Mac afterward) that I switched to Fusion. It seems to be a lot more robust. I'm going to try to get my money back on the V.4 upgrade.