Parallels continues to impress with its fast paced development efforts as it prepares to bring to market yet another update to its Parallels Desktop for Mac software. A beta release of the updated product is already in the hands of beta testers and is labeled as Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036. The beta product comes just as the MacWorld Conference and Expo is about to take over the Moscone Center in S Parallels continues to impress with its fast paced development efforts as it prepares to bring to market yet another update to its Parallels Desktop for Mac software. A beta release of the updated product is already in the hands of beta testers and is labeled as Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036. The beta product comes just as the MacWorld Conference and Expo is about to take over the Moscone Center in San Francisco on January 8, 2007.The beta release offers a completely redesigned interface for windows and dialogues making them more user-friendly, easier to manage and hopefully more appealing to the Mac audience. In addition to the new look and feel of the product, Parallels has also packed in a whole bunch of new features and enhancements to the product. Perhaps one of the more interesting features added is the connection between Parallels and Apple’s Boot Camp. One of the drawbacks to Apple’s implementation of Boot Camp was the fact that the user had to reboot the machine each time they wanted to boot from one environment to the next. Now, Parallels will allow a pre-installed Apple Boot Camp partition with Windows XP installed to be used as a virtual HDD for Parallels Desktop for Mac. Users can now boot from their 32-bit Windows XP Boot Camp partition directly from within Parallels. Another long awaited addition to the product is the seamless integration that Parallels will offer between the Mac OS and Windows. A new feature called “Coherence” shows Windows applications as if they were running natively on the Mac. Finally, no more switching between the Windows and Mac OS. True drag and drop functionality has also been added. It allows the user to seamlessly drag and drop files and folders from Windows to Mac OS X and vice versa. Parallels windows can now be resized just like any other Mac application window. And the windows will auto-adjust its screen resolution to the actual main window size.The virtual machine catalog is also being added to the product. Now, all of your virtual machines can be made available through a centralized VM catalog which appears on each Parallels Desktop for Mac instance. Networking has also been enhanced. Networking modes can be switched between, on-the-fly, while the virtual machine is running. And now, each virtual machine can have up to five virtual network interfaces. Shared networking mode has also been enhanced as users will also be allowed to run Cisco VPN and many other complex networking applications in conjunction with Connection Sharing Mode.Parallels is also working on adding in a new feature called the “Transporter Beta bundle” which will help users migrate a Windows PC or an existing VMware or Virtual PC virtual machine to a Parallels virtual machine. It will be Parallels version of the P2V or V2V solution.In addition to these features, the product also offers a number of other additions or enhancements such as a transparent mapping of the command-AZXCV key combinations for Mac copy/paste in Windows, shared folders on the fly to add/remove/configure shared folders on the fly via menu Status Bar icon without shutting down the virtual machine, drag and drop CD/FDD images and folders to the Parallels Desktop statusbar, improved graphics performance and new animated Power On/Power Off/Suspend/Resume/Pause functions. So where does Apple and Leopard fit in to all of this? It has been reported that Apple executives have stated that the company has no plans to incorporate virtualization technology into the final version of its Boot Camp software that ships with Leopard next spring. Bear Stearns analyst Andy Neff wrote in a research note to clients this week, “Apple indicated that it is very pleased with Parallels software and didn’t feel the need to compete with its own version of embedded virtualization.”I suppose only time will tell what Apple will or will not do with their next release, however it is safe to say that Parallels isn’t slowing down or taking its time coming out with feature enhancements. You can read more or download the latest Parallels beta product by visiting the following Web site. Software Development