[whitedog]

macaddiict said:

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

Did you enable multiple processors, and/or increase the RAM allocation for the virtual machine? By the way, they unified the RAM settings for the program and the VM, to an extent anyway. Previously, you had to increase the application RAM (in the application preferences) before you could increase the VM RAM. Now the application RAM setting has an automatic option that increases when you raise RAM for the VM. It took me a lot of digging to find out how to do it before. Now it's a snap. You also need to set CPU priority for the VM in order to get the best performance. And Parallels now has a feature called the Adaptive Hypervisor (enabled in the Optimization panel of the Configuration window) that allocates resources depending on whether you're working in the guest OS or OS X. There is even an optimization setting for better battery life on laptop computers. You need to tweak all these settings to get the improved performance you're looking for. By default, the settings are conservative and don't hog resources.

[bedarky]

Having read the comments here and elsewhere, I was prepared for the worst since many people have encountered so many difficulties with the upgrade. I made a complete backup of the hard drive on my MacBook using SuperDuper (just in case!) and read through as much of the relevant support material regarding the installation that I could - both on the Parallels website and on other sites I found through Google-ing "troubleshoot install Parallels 4.0 upgrade". (For example, I was prepared to OK anything the Parallels installer wanted to do and cancel most everything XP wanted to do, as this tip appeared in several sources - including Parallels documentation.) Having done all that, I was surprised then that my installation and upgrade went without a hitch. The only thing I was asked for during the entire installation process was the license number for my upgrade. (Part of the reason for the "without a hitch" installation may be that I have a very simple installation - no partitions - no boot camp - single user - no user passwords - only a few Windows applications- etc.)
Although I had NO trouble with installation, I did have a VERY difficult time downloading the 480 MB installer. After about 8 attempts in which the download failed after anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, I Google-ed a solution to this problem. I discovered that a download manager/accelerator would probably help in speeding up and managing the download so it could complete. I found that iGetter not only worked great - http://www.igetter.net/iGetter.html - but that it integrated well with my Firefox browser.
And once Windows launched in Parallels 4.0, Kaspersky Internet Security automatically loaded as well and prompted me easily through all the steps involved in activating, updating virus definitions, and scanning.

[macaddiict]

whitedog said:

Did you enable multiple processors, and/or increase the RAM allocation for the virtual machine? By the way, they unified the RAM settings for the program and the VM, to an extent anyway. Previously, you had to increase the application RAM (in the application preferences) before you could increase the VM RAM. Now the application RAM setting has an automatic option that increases when you raise RAM for the VM. It took me a lot of digging to find out how to do it before. Now it's a snap. You also need to set CPU priority for the VM in order to get the best performance. And Parallels now has a feature called the Adaptive Hypervisor (enabled in the Optimization panel of the Configuration window) that allocates resources depending on whether you're working in the guest OS or OS X. There is even an optimization setting for better battery life on laptop computers. You need to tweak all these settings to get the improved performance you're looking for. By default, the settings are conservative and don't hog resources.

Thanks for your message, whitedog. I actually did to all those things... I have menumeters installed so I noticed that the virtual machine was not using both cores, which led me to go through the settings and config screens line by line. Even with all the options you discussed on, I didn't notice an improvement in speed. However, the fact that the #1 feature Parallels is selling 4.0 on is speed, and none of these speed optimizations are turned on when you upgrade your VM is another reason I think this is a poor upgrade experience.

I think I'll erase and fresh install the entire machine over thanksgiving and see if that helps things... but I may be giving the competor VM a try.

[whitedog]

macaddiict said:

>

Quote

Thanks for your message, whitedog. I actually did to all those things... I have menumeters installed so I noticed that the virtual machine was not using both cores, which led me to go through the settings and config screens line by line. Even with all the options you discussed on, I didn't notice an improvement in speed. However, the fact that the #1 feature Parallels is selling 4.0 on is speed, and none of these speed optimizations are turned on when you upgrade your VM is another reason I think this is a poor upgrade experience.

I think I'll erase and fresh install the entire machine over thanksgiving and see if that helps things... but I may be giving the competor VM a try.

I haven't used the new version of Parallels enough to judge for myself how much improvement there is in performance. I do have problems with Windows XP. Internet Explorer 7 launches every time with add-ons disabled and the Manage Add-ons line in the Tools menu is grayed out so I cannot find a way to turn them on again - to use Silverlight to use Instant Watching at Netflix, for instance. Not being a Windows expert I haven't been able to figure this one out. Explorer Help has so far been useless. Fortunately, Silverlight works in Firefox in Windows so I was finally able to test Netflix Instant Watching - since I recently signed up for their beta program. Though not perfect - there are still a few minor streaming hitches - it runs significantly better than it did in earlier versions of Parallels.

I bought Fusion a while back when I was having problems with Parallels 2. It is certainly a viable alternative and worth a try. But you will need to reauthorize Windows when you install it. Though Fusion can convert a Parallels VM, it may not work yet with a Parallels 4 version. In any case that would not really be a clean install. Reauthorizing by phone works better than using the Internet. Just tell the automated service you had problems with Windows and need to reauthorize it on the same machine.

Personally, I like the new Parallels interface, with its more granular settings control. Any problems with performance I would be more likely to chalk up to Windows itself, or the new security software.

[sat54]

I bought the upgrade and have tried to install. Installation went smooth BUT after that nothing worked properly and was extremely SLOW to open a blank screen where an application was to open. If you try I highly recommend that you use at least the backup option. Additionally the cost was $39.95 plus shipping.
I am returning the upgrade and will wait until later to try after problems are worked out.

[Leto_Parallels]

sat54,

You said the installation went smoothly, may I ask about how long it took you?

[mindflayer]

Simdude - Parallels is not a small company. Parallels, neé SWSoft, makes Virtuozzo, Plesk, and the Parallels products.

[sat54]

I really didn't time it but I would guess about 30 min-1 hour. It took a lot longer to uninstall the 4.0 and the reinstall the 3. and get it working again.

[elearn]

I've used Parallels since it first came out. My guest OS is XP Pro SP 3. A month ago, because of the work I do, I had to upgrade to Vista Ultimate. Vista Ultimate under Parallels 3 was unusable; not being able to wait for Parallels 4 I gave Fusion 2 a try. Vista Ultimate running as a guest OS under Fusion 2 is better than usable. It is quite responsive. Best of all, I was able to ask for and receive support from an actual person. I'm still waiting to hear back from someone at Parallels for questions I asked last year.
When I heard that Parallels 4 was out I downloaded a trial and installed Vista Ultimate on it. Installation via Parallels wasn't nearly as easy as it was with Fusion 2. Based on a cursory review lasting all of 15 minutes my recommendation is that if you are considering the purchase of Parallels 4 to run Windows Vista Ultimate you stop wasting your time and go right on over and download Fusion. Maybe Parallels 5 will be better.
I think it's significant that Parallels put a copy of the Windows XP desktop in their product banner. It's yesterday's news.

[xrogue]

So, for the Guild Wars question:

On Parallels 3, I was able to get a max of 12 FPS when running Guild Wars after numerous configuration changes. With Parallels 4.0, it runs in excess of 30 FPS. I believe the main reason is due to the video ram change: 64Mb max in 3, 256Mb max in 4.0, but I could be way off... ;) I am running a MacBook Pro with a GeForce 8600 GT and 256Mb of ram and a 2.4GHz intel core 2 duo processor.

My 3 to 4 upgrade experience:

As people have stated before, it is definitely not for the faint of heart. Numerous times it told me it could not proceed. These times all seemed related to Windows Activation. So many virtual configuration changes took place, I was required to reactive my license. Of course, when I tried, I was kindly informed that my activation count had exceeded some nebulous number. I then went through the telephone portion of the activation and finally got a live person to talk to. About 8 minutes later, everything was all cleared up and I was good to go.

During the first hiccup, I had no mouse or keyboard response, so I ended up shutting down Parallels and restarting it. Mouse and keyboard response returned, and I was able to get past the windows activation screens (for the moment). Parallels seemed to pick up where it left off after that.

Since I had just recently set up Parallels, there was not much to convert from 3 to 4, so that may have contributed to the (eventual) success of the operation: it was a very simplistic install of Windows, with only a few applications.

I have not played around with it much since testing out GW (that, of course, was the primary reason for the upgrade :)). More on that later...

[whitedog]

xrogue said:

On Parallels 3, I was able to get a max of 12 FPS when running Guild Wars after numerous configuration changes. With Parallels 4.0, it runs in excess of 30 FPS. I believe the main reason is due to the video ram change: 64Mb max in 3, 256Mb max in 4.0, but I could be way off... ;) I am running a MacBook Pro with a GeForce 8600 GT and 256Mb of ram and a 2.4GHz intel core 2 duo processor.

I assume you mean 256 MB of RAM in Parallels. Depending on how much RAM you have in the MBP, you could improve Windows performance even further by raising the RAM allocation to 512 or even 1 GB. There are other settings you can tweak as well: in the Configuration window, in the Optimization panel, you can turn on the Adaptive Hypervisor, which allocates system resources depending on whether you are working in Windows or the Mac OS; you can optimizer performance for the virtual machine; and you can adjust settings for laptop performance, depending on whether you run Parallels on battery power or mains (plugged in). These and other extended settings are among the improvements in Parallels 4.

For the real Windows aficionado, you can even set the boot order in the VM Configuration to avoid manually messing with the BIOS settings. ;-)

[Tatemae]

I have been using Parallels 3 for a while and like it.
I have a very annoying issue, though, and I would like to ask you guys if you are facing the same.
When you work in Windows (in my case, Vista Ultimate) with Parallels, your Mac keyboard is NOT recognized. Windows acts as if you had a standard Microsoft keyboard. And since the keys are not identical between the two, there is quite a number of characters that you cannot find easily. This is the case of the @ and € signs, for instance.
I was wondering if :
1) Other Parallels users have had the same issue
2) Parallels 4 resolves the issue
Thanks !

[whitedog]

Tatemae said:

I have been using Parallels 3 for a while and like it.

I have a very annoying issue, though, and I would like to ask you guys if you are facing the same.

When you work in Windows (in my case, Vista Ultimate) with Parallels, your Mac keyboard is NOT recognized. Windows acts as if you had a standard Microsoft keyboard. And since the keys are not identical between the two, there is quite a number of characters that you cannot find easily. This is the case of the @ and € signs, for instance.

I was wondering if :
1) Other Parallels users have had the same issue
2) Parallels 4 resolves the issue

You can map Mac keyboard shortcuts to their Windows equivalents in the Parallels preferences and add new combinations, but I don't know if it will work to remap individual keys. For the @ sign, for instance, you could try mapping Shift-2 to whatever key contains the @ symbol on a Windows keyboard, which presumably also uses the Shift key. I don't have a Windows keyboard on hand to locate the appropriate keys to check this out myself. But since you've been struggling with this problem for a while I assume you already know at least some of the keys. I suspect it will work for any characters that require one control key or another to type, like the Euro and the dollar sign.

[Archiform_3D]

Well, there are still some little junk apps that still require you to fire up Windoze. I have been using it for ages and never had a problem. Mind you, I might only fire it up once every 3 months.

Steve Bell
Archiform 3D Renderings