Submitted by “Parallels today announced the availability of Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta2. In addition to the numerous enhancements and new features included in Parallels Workstation 2.1 Beta1, this upgraded version of Parallels’ desktop virtualization solution includes a completely new user interface, faster virtual machine performance, better stability and stronger isolation, more advanced USB support that enables users to access a broader range of popular USB devices like cameras, flash drives and PDAs directly in virtual machines.”
i think parallels use qemu code….
somebody can confirm?
There’s no way. Parallels is very fast, even with KQemu (proprietary acceleration module for qemu), qemu is way slow. Just look at Win4lin Pro (which uses qemu). I use Parallels and it _appears_ to me to be very fast. I will test the USB support. The interesting thing is I am running my images off of an external USB hard drive. I wonder what will happen when USB support is added to the OS. Will it “know” that it is running from a USB drive?
If you connect your USB hard drive to VM it will dissapear from your host OS. And the first following interaction between VM and its HDD image will fail probably…
Performance-wise, that is…
it’s very fast, the installation is very easy (easier than vmware) but I had problems running my canon lide f500 usb scanner with win2k as guest os.
win2k recognizes the scanner, but the driver crashes when I try to scan a document. other usb devices like usb flash stick seems to work fine.
-B
hopefully beta2 will fix this issue
It is very-very sad that the SSI connection was terminated and the eCS project terminated. Now eCS is only listed as guest OS.
Who cares about the ability to run MS-Windows as primary/host OS anyway. We only need WM’s to run MS-Windows as guest OS.
Unfortunately eComStation is not very popular OS and it is not likely VM vendors like VMware, MS or Parallels will ever support it as host.
But as I know there was very good Connectix VPC 5 port for OS/2 and eComStation?
AFAIK the Virtual Station that got cancelled by Parallels (In the beta phase of version 2) was the last developed and actually available solution.
(And none of these has USB support, which is one of the largest reasons for using the thing).
Edited 2006-02-23 16:32
Fast, and responsive… factly, way faster than VMware.
But good things stop here: Most USB devices cannot grab focus from the host OS, and CD/DVD burners can only work as readers.
Surely enough promising, but just not mature yet…
Sounds like they’ve done some serious optimizing
I personally dig the new interface. Its nice to see something that’s easy on the eyes and really helps usability, rahter than just dealing with the boring blue/white/grey color scheme of most programs. I saw that the Parallels’ guys just launched a blog at
http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/ …there’s a shot of the interface on yesterday’s post.
Edited 2006-02-24 15:43