Parallels Releases New Build Of Parallels Desktop For Mac…. Will This Silence The Critics? [UPDATE x2]

A new version of Parallels Desktop For Mac appeared on it’s website today. According to the release notes, it promises substantial bug fixes and improvements over their last release including:

  • DirectX 9.0 with Shaders Model 2 support
  • Windows 7 inside the virtual machine (experimental)
  • Apple remote disk support
  • SSE4 support (better performance for media applications)
  • General performance improvements.
  • Improved USB support (performance, USB1.1 compatibility fixes).

Given that Parallels has been the target of critics who have accused the company of releasing beta code as well as buggy software to its users which has forced their CEO to fight back against these charges, one hopes that this release will put an end to this noise once and for all.

I have not installed this release yet, but I plan to later today when I get some time to do this. If you you’ve tried this release and have some feedback on it, please leave a comment and let us know what you think. I will try to monitor things in cyberspace just in case something “interesting” appears.

UPDATE: Parallels has a press release on their site about this. Mentioned in this press release is this:

Customer Experience Program
Ensure Parallels continues to meet your needs by providing information on your use priorities and preferences. Customers choose to opt in or out at installation and can fully control their settings through the configuration editor.

I’ll have to install this to see what this means for end users.

UPDATE #2: I just installed it. No issues so far. Here’s what the Customer Experience Program means for users:

If you choose to participate, Parallels will automatically start to collect anonymous information about your hardware configuration and the way you use Parallels Desktop. Using this information, Parallels can learn how to improve Parallels Desktop and the features you use more often.

So they’re doing what Microsoft has done for a while. Intersting. I’m guessing that it comes out of the issues that may have existed with Parallels Desktop 4 and how it was handled.

Oh yeah, it does seem a tad bit faster overall. But USB speed is clearly faster than their previous release.

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