"Ask Ben Anything" has been promoted!

Since I launched my "Ask Ben Anything" column on the Official Parallels Blog, its become the Blog's most popular weekly read, with several thousand loyal Parallels users and tech geeks from all over the internet coming by to see what's up.

Because its been so popular - and so productive in getting common user questions answered - we're promoting "Ask Ben Anything" to the main Parallels website, under the guise of our new Knowledge Base. The Knowledge Base (KB for short) will reside in the "Support" section, and will be a living, searchable (by date and topic) FAQ of most-asked questions about Parallels products. This will be a great resource for new users who are getting started, and for old friends who need more information.

The important part here is that YOU determine what is in the KB! Keep your questions coming to askben@parallels.com, and they, along with the questions our support team see, will be compiled into a weekly KB update that covers the most common questions for the last 7 days.

"Ask Ben Anything" will live on here on the Blog, but I will be focusing more on forthcoming features, usage/deployment strategies, and tech commentary and general industry trends.

I am making this announcement now because the KB should be ready to go just about the time I get finished with my week long 2,985 mile drive from my current home in Philadelphia to my new home near Parallels headquarters in Seattle. Assuming I live through the week, "Ask Ben Anything" will return in its new format the week of April 9th.

_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Share Windows and Mac files with anyone, instantly, anywhere in the world, with Tubes and Parallels Desktop

Earlier this week I became acquainted with Tubes, an exceptionally cool new application that lets you instantly connect and share stuff with people all over the world. How's it work? Just load up the Tubes applcation, drop a file into your "tube" and it instantly appears in your friend's tube. He/she can tinker with the file, save it back, and you'll have instant access to the modified file. It's basically like instant messenger for your files.

The catch? It's a Windows-only application. As you can guess, that's where Parallels comes in. Not only does Tubes work great in Parallels, but the guys at Adesso (Tubes' developer) took the time to optimize their code to work seamlessly with Parallels new Coherence mode, which lets you run Windows apps on your Mac desktop, just like they were native Mac apps. This means that you can load the Windows-only version of Tubes in Parallels Desktop for Mac in Coherence mode, and drag and drop Mac OR Windows files to your Tube!

Steve Chazin, VP of Marketing at Adesso, put together a short YouTube video on how this works:



This is exactly why Coherence is such an important technology. Because it ensures that you have access to whatever application you need, regardless of what OS it runs on and without having to change your user experience, the concept of "which operating system should I choose?" immediately shifts to "What's the right application to get the job done?". And from my experience so far, if that job requires file sharing, the answer is probably "Tubes."

Very cool stuff. Try it for yourself; Tubes is available as a free download at TubesNow.com, and you can get Parallels Desktop for Mac at our Main Download Page.

_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Ask Ben Anything - iSight in Vista, firewire printers, 3D graphics update, changing the size of a VM windows

1) When can I start using my iSight camera in my Vista VM?

- Kewal M.

The reason that you can't use the iSight camera in a Vista VM is that Apple hasn't provided Mac Drivers for Vista yet. Once they're enabled, we'll make it happen.


2) Just got a new Epson Stylus Photo R1800 printer, and I can't get windows to recognize it. It is plugged into a firewire port on my Apple Studio Display which is connected to my MacBook Pro. Any idea how to get them to talk?

Thanks,
Kevin S.

Right now, Parallels supports printing via a LAN or by USB 2.0. Firewire printers aren't currently supported, but we're looking to include this support later this year.


3) Parallels is great but I am curious how much longer we'll have to wait until it can take advantage of the hardware 3D graphics capability of our Intel Macs.

Sincerely,
Jason C.

This is one of the most-asked questions I receive! We are still on track to deliver this functionality (including support for the Vista Aero interface) later this year. As I mentioned before, this feature was pushed back a bit so we could get really important productivity features like Transporter and Coherence into everyone's hands - for free - in the short-term.


4) My Windows window got huge when I went from fullscreen to regular windowed mode! Its so big that I can't drag the corner to make it smaller. How do I get my taskbar back?

- Anonymous

Easy. Right click on your Windows desktop and select "properties". Then, click the "appearance" tab and manually reduce the resolution. Click "apply" and your VM window will shrink. Resize it, then set the resolution back to its original value.
_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Parallels in Today's Wall Street Journal

Nick Wingfield wrote a great article in today's Wall Street Journal about Apple's return to enterprise computing, and why Parallels & its ability to run Windows and OS X simultaneously is a big part of that resurgence. You can read the entire article at the Wall Street Journal Online, or pick up a paper and check us out on page B3.

The article also has a nice screenshot of Coherence - our new feature that lets you run Windows apps on a Mac like they were native Mac apps. Since its kind of small on the Journal's site, I've posted it below so you can check out Coherence without having to squint.

Coherence is way cooler in action than it is in a still screenshot. If you've got a second, take a look at the Coherence YouTube video that I shot about a week ago for a better idea of what it is, and why its so important.

_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Desktop for Mac: One of InformationWeek's top Mac products

Over the weekend John Welch, InformationWeek's in-house Mac expert, wrote an article about the top 22 "lesser-known applications that can make your Mac experience more productive and more fun." Parallels Desktop for Mac was on the list, and checked in right near the top at #7.

While I'm a bit surprised that John considers us "lesser known", Parallels definitely will "make your Mac experience more productive and more fun". Here's what John had to say:

"Every once in a while, a product comes along that radically changes not just how you perform a specific task or tasks, but how you view your computer in general. Sometimes it's a specific application, like VisiCalc, sometimes it's a category of applications, like Desktop Publishing. Sometimes it's both. On the Mac, it's Parallels and Virtualization. Now, to be fair, there have been types of virtualization around for years and decades on the Mac. But prior to the Intel Macs, they were slow, and the kinds of things you used only when you had to. With the Intel Macs, virtualization moved from the...lassitude of Virtual PC to the real world usability of Parallels. (Yes, I know about VMWare fusion, but it's not soup yet, and I think talking about obvious betas is not really fair.) I use Parallels a lot, and I don't just use it with one OS. Currently I'm running Windows XP, Vista Business, and Ubuntu under Parallels. They all work wonderfully well, and without the tremendous hit in speed that you had with Virtual PC on PowerPC hardware. If all Parallels did was provide a solid VM setup on the Intel Macs, it would be a good product. But they keep doing more. With the next version, they'll have "Coherence" mode, which allows Windows applications to just "appear" on your Mac OS X desktop without needing the Windows desktop container window in your way. (It's still there, it's just invisible.)

You also get the ability to keep Windows applications in the Dock, and it will work with BootCamp partitions. There's no accelerated 3-D support yet, nor support for running on Mac OS X Server yet, but Parallels says its coming, and with their pace of development, I don't doubt it in the least. With Parallels, I'm able to do, well, almost anything I want with my Mac, all without having to add a Windows partition to my system. Not that I can't do that. With its BootCamp support, I can easily run my BootCamp installation of Windows inside a Parallels VM as well. The best of both worlds. Not bad for a product that costs less than ninety bucks in the U.S."

You can read the rest of the InformationWeek article and see who joined us on the list here. We're in part 2 of the article.

_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Ask Ben Anything - Using the number pad, moving from Parallels to Boot Camp, Backing up a VM

1) With all the new features in Parallels and the updates to Boot Camp, I would now like to use a Boot Camp partition and run the Boot Camp drive in a VM when I am dual-tasking in OS X. I currently have a VM with my only version of XP Pro installed. Can I transfer my current XP installation to Boot Camp? Or, in other words, how can I use a Boot Camp install and not have to start over and reinstall my applications, updates, and settings?

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,
Michael M.

Sorry Michael, this isn't possible right now. We support using a Boot Camp partition in Parallels, but you can't move a pre-existing Parallels installation to Boot Camp. Don't rule it out in the future, but for now, its Boot Camp to Parallels only.


2) How the hell do I use my numeric keypad in Parallels?

- Eric B.

If you're on an iMac or Mini and are using a PC keyboard, its as easy as hitting the "NumLock" key, just like you would on a real PC. If you're on an Apple keyboard there is no NumLock key, so you'll need to hit the key that sits in it's place...the "clear" key. That'll get your keypad working.


3) I tried to backup my Parallels folder with my Win XP Home virtual machine to my external hard disk. It copies ok until almost the end and then it an error. How do I backup my virtual machine to my external hard disk? I really need to do this because its becoming really tedious to setup my winxp vm everytime I reformat my mac.

- Anonymous

That's very odd, since backing up a Parallels virtual machine file is just like backing up any other Mac file. I'd do some diagnostics on your Mac HD and external HD to make sure that that's in working order.

When you back up a VM, you can do it 2 ways. First, you can simply right click the VM folder and click "duplicate". This will make an identical copy of the folder and its contents. You can also go into "file" in the Parallels menu bar and click "clone". This will do the same thing, but you won't have to leave the Parallels interface. Your VM will need to be off to clone it.

If your VM is pretty big, I'd recommend running Compressor first. Log into Windows, then click "actions" and run Compressor from there. Compressor will run a system cleanup, fix allocation errors, defragment your hard drive, and then compress the actual hard drive file on your Mac - sometimes by 50% or more. Its a great way to save hard drive space and keep everything neat and tidy.
_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Physician, Heal Thyself!

Sentillion’s vThere product, which is powered by Parallels Workstation, has been awarded RSA Secured® certification with RSA SecurID, meaning that vThere works seamlessly with industry leading two-factor authentication technology from RSA, The Security Division of EMC. In layman’s terms, this means that VThere is rock-solid and stable in the most demanding security scenarios.

So why am I writing about this, you ask?

In version 1.0 of vThere, which was not RSA certified, Sentillion used VMware’s free Player as its virtualization engine. When they replaced VMware technology with with Parallels Workstation’s fully-featured, enterprise-ready technology, it was quickly awarded RSA certification. This is a great testament to Parallels superior stability and it’s ability to perform under rigorous conditions.

Even more interesting is the fact that RSA and VMware both happen to be owned by EMC. And, even though RSA and VMware all in the same family, VMware’s competing product to vThere, ACE 2.0, does not have RSA certification.

Interesting stuff. In short, I think that William Shatner said it best when he said, in Airplane II, “Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.”

_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Ask Ben Anything - Switching between Workstation and Desktop, Upgrading to Vista, Download Problems, Localized Builds

1) I have a doubt about Parallels, is possible to use disk image make with Parallels for Windows, in Parallels for Linux ?

Best Regards
Laverson

Absolutely. All of our virtual machine formats are universal, meaning that you can move your VMs between Workstation and Desktop without any manual reconfiguration or setup. This is really handy if you're working on a desktop computer and need to work offsite on a "foreign" machine, since you're able to bring your VM with you. Try loading it on a flash drive or DVD (if its small), or a portable external drive (if its big).


2) How do I upgrade my XP machine to Vista? Is it even possible?

- Darla B.

Yes, it is. This is a feature that we introduced just before the final version of the update, in RC3. In the Parallels menu bar, click "actions", then click "Prepare for Vista Upgrade". Parallels will do some back-end reconfiguration that will enable you to upgrade from XP to Vista just like you would on a real PC.


3) I had issues downloading the Update yesterday. What's up?

- Anonymous

Our servers got hammered yesterday due to the crazy amount of interest in the Update. Everything its resolved now though, so you can hit the Main Desktop for Mac Download Page and get the new build right now. Just install it overtop of your current version.


4) Hallo from Germany! When will the German version of the Update be available for us?

- Jan E.

When a new release goes final, we immediately start localizing the build. Typically this is a pretty fast process, so expect localized builds for Germany (and everywhere else!) in a week or two.
_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!

Transporter & Coherence videos

Since Coherence and Transporter make a lot more sense when you see them versus reading about them, I shot short videos on both and posted them to YouTube. Check 'em out:

More on Transporter



Coherence in action

Pretty cool, right? Try it for yourself by getting a free 15-day trial of Desktop for Mac here.
_____________________________
Become a friend of Parallels on MySpace!
Join us at www.myspace.com/parallelsinc!