Review: Parallels Desktop 3--Fast and Versatile

Snapshots and Undo Disks

Also new in this version is the ability to create Snapshots of your virtual machine. A Snapshot is just what you think it might be--a picture of your virtual machine's setup at a point in time. Create a Snapshot before installing a new program; if you want to revert your system at some point, you can do so using the Snapshot Manager. Creating a Snapshot is more space-efficient than simply duplicating your virtual machine's disk image in the Finder: I created two Snapshots of my 10GB Windows XP Pro virtual disk, and the total space required was just over 1GB. You can create Snapshots for the other Parallels-supported OSes as well.

The Undo Disks feature is like an always-active Snapshot. Although turned off by default, this feature lets you undo all changes made to your virtual machine during a session: when you shut down the virtual machine, it will revert to its previous state. In a lab setup, a feature like this can ensure that any changes made by students won't survive beyond the next launch of Parallels. Note that you cannot use both Undo Disks and Snapshots on the same virtual machine.

Boot Camp partition support

Parallels 2.5 added the ability to use your Boot Camp Windows XP partition as a Parallels virtual machine, eliminating the need for two separate Windows installations. In Parallels 3, you can now also use a Vista Boot Camp partition, and the speed of mounting Boot Camp partitions is faster. The first time you run Parallels, it will search for any Boot Camp partitions and offer to create virtual machines from those Windows installations (you can also do this manually if you wish). The main limitation of this setup is that you won't be able to create Snapshots or use Undo Disks on Boot Camp partitions. When this feature was first introduced in Parallels 2.5, users had some trouble with it, but it worked well for me in Parallels 3.

Coherence Mode

Introduced with Parallels 2.5, Coherence mode interleaves windows from both Windows and OS X. Instead of having one window to represent your Windows machine--complete with background image and desktop icons--Coherence mode creates a separate OS X-like window for each Windows window, and hides the Windows desktop and desktop icons. Switching between OS X and Windows applications is as simple as switching between OS X applications--just click the window you wish to use. The Windows taskbar will also be visible, so if you intend to use this mode, it's best to move either the Dock or the Windows taskbar to the side of the screen, to avoid confusion.

I ran a number of Windows and OS X applications side-by-side in Coherence mode, and everything worked as expected--except when I used Apple's Exposi features. Exposi treats all open Windows windows as one window, and shows them grouped together when you press F9. As a result, you can't choose a specific target application by using F9 and then clicking on the target program's window. Instead, you click on the group of Windows windows in Exposi, and whatever application is frontmost becomes the frontmost open application after switching. You can, however, use Command-Tab or the Dock to switch to a specific Windows application, as each gets its own icon in the switcher and the Dock.

Smart Select

Smart Select is a promising feature, at least in theory: when Parallels is running, files on either the Windows virtual machine or your Mac can be opened with either Windows or Mac applications. When you control-click a file in either OS, the Open With menu option will list both Mac and Windows programs that can open that file. In practice, however, I found this feature confusing and not all that helpful. For many common file formats, such as JPEG and TIFF, the list of entries on the Open With menu is already sizable with only OS X apps included; adding more choices doesn't do anything to help my productivity.

Smart Select also features a special Shared Applications folder in the Windows Start menu. This folder is populated with a list of every program on your Mac, so you can open a Mac application directly from Windows. I have hundreds of Mac apps, however, and seeing them all in one gargantuan menu really isn't a benefit of any sort. According to the manual, this feature can be disabled in the new Security Manager. In my testing, however, that was not the case--the huge list was still present regardless of my Security Manager settings. After sending an e-mail to Parallels' tech support, I was told that a soon-to-be-released free update would take care of the problem.