Quoting from the official Parallels Press Release:

Parallels, Inc. today announced the general availability of version 2.1 of its desktop virtualization software, Parallels Workstation. The upgraded version delivers faster performance, better stability, and stronger isolation of virtual machines.

Additional improvements and new features in the popular, easy-to-use, cost-effective virtualization software include:

• A completely re-designed interface.
• Better hardware support, including USB and wireless networking support, and support for PAE-enabled machines.
• Better functionality, including the ability to suspend and resume VM (virtual machine) activity, a new "compact hard disk" feature that helps users manage available hard disk resources, and a more robust tools package that lets users personalize their experience.
• Primary and guest support for SUSE Linux 10.
• Guest OS support for Sun Solaris.
• Improved performance for guest OS/2 virtual machines.

A complete list of Workstation 2.1's new features and functions is available at http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/newfeatures/.

"Parallels Workstation 2.1 is everything you need in a virtualization solution; it offers superlative performance, stability and ease of use, and on top of that, it is by far the most cost-effective solution available," said Benjamin Rudolph, Parallels' Marketing Manager. "This release's impressive performance, feature set and industry-leading, low price point, coupled with free upgrades for current customers and responsive support, reinforce our across-the-board commitment to building virtualization solutions that work for anyone, regardless of computer savvy or budget."

Additionally, Parallels announced that future versions of Parallels virtualization products will offer full support for Intel's next generation of hardware virtualization technology, Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d), which extends virtualization support into the platform by making it possible to robustly assign IO devices to virtual machines (VMs) in a virtualized system. This enables devices to be driven "directly" by the native/physical driver when assigned to a virtual machine, resulting in significantly faster virtual machine performance.

"Intel is delivering relevant innovations for virtualization solution providers including Intel Virtualization Technology for CPU (VTx) and Directed IO (VTd), Dual Core microprocessors and Intel(R) Core(R) Microarchitecture," said David Tuhy, General Manager of Intel's Desktop Products Division. "Parallels has taken full advantage of VTx in Parallels Workstation 2.1, and we look forward to continued collaboration with Parallels on enabling new platform capabilities such as VTd which will help improve the reliability, performance and flexibility of I/O devices on virtual machines."

Read the entire press release, here.