Parallels has announced the latest release of its Desktop for Mac product, Release Candidate 3, Build 3170.
There are a lot of features and enhancements introduced in this Release Candidate 3, such as:
- NEW! Windows XP to Windows Vista upgrade support
- NEW! USB 2.0 support - “Plug and play” popular USB devices like external hard drives, printers, scanners and web cameras including iSight at full native speed.
- NEW! Full-feature virtual CD/DVD drive - Burn CDs and DVDs directly in virtual machines, and play any copy-protected CD or DVD just like you would on a real PC
- NEW! Coherence - The groundbreaking feature that lets you run Windows applications without seeing Windows just got better! Learn more about Coherence >>
- NEW! Better Boot Camp support - Using your Boot Camp partition in Parallels Desktop is now easier than ever. RC3’s Boot Camp support includes:
- Full support for FAT32 and NTFS partitions
- Easy offline configuration. Simply tell Parallels Desktop that you want to create a virtual machine from a Boot Camp Partition and click start. No complicated set up required!
- No need to re-activate Windows each time you switch between Boot Camp and Parallels. Activate Windows only once inside Parallels and work in both environments
- NEW! For advanced users: configurating the layout of Boot Camp partitions by manual editing of Virtual Machine's .pvs configuration file.
- IMPORTANT! It is not possible to suspend a Virtual Machine that is connected to Boot Camp as it could result in an unstable system.
- VERY IMPORTANT! Beta1 (build 3036) users must boot natively into Boot Camp and uninstall Parallels Tools for Boot Camp prior to running it in RC3 (build 3170).
- NEW! Transporter RC3 bundled - migrate your real Windows PC, or existing VMware or Virtual PC VMs to Parallels virtual machines! Learn more about Transporter RC3 >>
- IMPORTANT! Previous Beta users MUST upgrade their Transporter package on their Windows source machine before using Transporter in RC3. Failing to do so may result in a system crash and loss of data
- NEW! Added keyboard remapping configuration
- New Look and Feel - completely redesigned windows and easier to follow dialogues to make Desktop for Mac more user-friendly than ever
- NEW! True “Drag and Drop” functionality - a long awaited feature that lets you seamlessly drag and drop files and folders from Windows to Mac OS X and vice versa. Parallels Desktop now shares the entire Mac file structure between OS X and Windows - no more worrying about which copy of the file is the most recently updated!
- NEW! Global sharing is disabled by default. The enabling promt pops up on first "Drag and Drop" attempt.
- Read/Write Boot Camp partition - use your Apple Boot Camp Partition as a virtual HDD for Parallels Desktop for Mac
- Virtual Machine Catalogue - now all of your virtual machines are available through a centralized VM catalogue which appears on each Parallels Desktop for Mac instance
- One-click Virtual Machine Aliases - automatically create a desktop shortcut for your virtual machine with the OS Installation Assistant, by dragging-and-dropping from title bar, or by pressing Command-Option keys combination. Clicking on Alias automatically starts the Virtual Machine
- Resizable Main Window - resize the Parallels Desktop for Mac main window as you do with any other Mac application
- Auto-Adjusting Screen Resolution - Windows auto-adjusts its screen resolution to the actual main window size
- Improved graphic performance - up to 50% faster!
- Connect/disconnect USB devices schema improved - no more annoying “wait 5-10 seconds” message on USB device connecting to Parallels Desktop for Mac!
- Up to 5 Virtual NICs - now each Virtual Machine can have up to five virtual network interfaces
- Enhanced Shared Networking Mode - run Cisco VPN and many other complex networking applications in conjunction with Connection Sharing Mode
- NEW! Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" ready
- NEW! Several USB support fixes
You can download the latest RC3 build, here.