William Computer Blog

Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta build 3036

A few days ago the Parallels team released a new beta build 3036 of Parallels Desktop for Mac. Parallels Desktop for Mac is a virtualization software available for Intel Mac computers. By using Parallels Desktop for Mac, you can run virtual machines running different operating systems including Windows, Linux, and many more.

There are tons of new features and enhancement provided in the beta version. The most interesting features for me are:

• Drag and drop files between Mac and Windows
• Read/write BootCamp partition
• Boot from Bootcamp partition
• Coherence which show Windows applications as if they are native Mac OS X application. Want to see an example? View screenshot of Internet Explorer 7 with coherency support by Dan Benjamin.

A great list of changes and the good news is it will be a FREE update. I just wish Parallels would support the above mentioned features on other operating systems especially Linux. It would also be handy (for me) if they could provide support for more operating systems such as OpenBSD or NetBSD.

You read more about the new features or download the beta version of the software from the announcement on Parallels Forum.

I can’t wait to see how VMware for Mac would compare with Parallels Desktop. The virtualization software from VMware for Mac is currently in private beta. The new version is codenamed Fusion and you can find out more about it from VMware for Mac OS X site.

• December 5, 2006