Overall Rating:

4 out of 5

Good but not perfect, January 3, 2009
By Whirled_Peas

"Interesting that the user reviews so far are so harsh. I haven't come across many products that are bad enough to deserve a '1' rating, and Parallels certainly isn't one of them. Even v1.0 didn't deserve such a low rating. When you rate a product, you have to consider a number of factors, including value (price vs. features) and the target audience. It wouldn't be reasonable, for example, to give Adobe Photoshop a '1' rating because it's a difficult program for beginners to use. It isn't meant for beginners.

It's also not reasonable to trash Parallels for not being a beginner-level program. It's virtualization software, not a text editor.

I found Parallels 4.0 to be relatively easy to install and use, better on both counts than v3. The company needs to streamline the upgrade process a bit, mainly to iron out problems with any installed Windows (or other) operating systems that have been customized at all from their default configurations. It's also irritating that v4 completely wipes out v3, a non-standard practice for upgrades (and a non-issue for new users).

My biggest gripe with Parallels is that some Windows programs (namely games) still don't run as smoothly as they should, even with a higher-end Mac configuration. But v4 offers many improvements over v3 in that area, too.

As far as support, I haven't contacted Parallels for support, so I can't speak to their performance, but I can't think of many companies who deserve more than a '2' on a scale of 1-5. Customer support from most companies (not just software) is lukewarm at best. To be fair to hardware and software companies, many customers expect help with problems that go beyond a piece of hardware or software (operating system incompatibilities, for example). On the other hand, there are few things more irritating than being routinely blown off by companies that automatically assume everyone is an idiot.

Overall, I'd give Parallels a 3.5 to 4 star rating. It's the best virtualization software for the Mac, even with its flaws."

10 of 10 people found this review helpful.