mac planet: Living in a Parallels Universe

By Yves Avérous

For those on the NCTA members list or TransMUG mailing list, you already know that Parallels Desktop is now a fully functional, out-of-beta solution to run Windows in a virtual environment on Intel Macs. Michel Lopez and I have had occasion to use this solution during the last few weeks and have enjoyed its benefits. I must admit that I have used it primarily to access CD-ROM dictionaries, some administrative functions of the NCTA website, and the IKEA Kitchen Planner. So far, so good, besides the quirks of any PC, such as having to restart again and again whenever you install something or update your machine! Michel, also, has had a positive experience with the product, with one caveat: trying to copy a file larger than the remaining disk space on the virtual machine sends the virtual machine in an endless loop. At this point, the only solution he had found was to rebuild the virtual machine from scratch … ouch! Personally, I don’t trust PCs, so I keep all my files on the Mac side. Your Mac drive appears as a networked volume and you can save anything there as you would on a network. To learn more about Mac products and to converse with other Mac users, subscribe to the TransMUG list at https://groups.yahoo.com/group/transmug.