I must admit that I'd forgotten that I had purchased Parallels 3 back in 2006. The latest version was released yesterday and, as I'm now a VMware Fusion 2 user (and happy with Fusion), completely forgot that I was an original Parallels user and that the upgrade was reasonably compelling. I say reasonable, as they add 19% tax on to the upgrade price so it's over £30, compared to the free upgrade for VMware Fusion 1 users when v2 was released a couple of months ago.

Parallels 4 is a virtualisation tool that enables you to run another operating system on your Mac. The obvious choice is Windows, although you can also use Linux or a similar OS or multiple operating systems on your Mac. My choice is Windows XP as it proves a faster experience than Vista under virtualisation. It requires less memory, too. The new Parallels 4 is said to be up to 50% faster than the previous version and there are also a number of other features. Still, you have to pay to upgrade, but I guess it's a couple of years since the original v3.0 release.

Parallels 4 link.

12 Nov 2008