Parallels Desktop 3.0 Update nears release

Stephen Withers
Monday, 03 September 2007 06:25

Business IT - Technology

An imminent release of Parallels Desktop 3.0 Update has been signalled by the arrival of a release candidate available to existing owners.

The appearance of the release candidate "means that we're very close to launch", said Benjamin Rudolph, Parallels' director of corporate communications.

Parallels Desktop for Mac is virtualisation software that allows Windows and other guest operating systems to run within Mac OS X.

Features new to 3.0 Update were described in our previous story, but one fresh feature in the release candidate is that Coherence now brings Windows notifications to the front.

Coherence is the part of the product that allows Mac and Windows windows to appear alongside each other rather than having Windows quarantined in a virtual screen.

The 87M release candidate also delivers several bug fixes and improvements, notably CPU and memory use optimisation, DirectX and OpenGL performance improvements, and the correction of specific problems in areas such as Parallels Tools and folder sharing.

Several problems are still outstanding, notably in Coherence, so it would not be surprising if a second release candidate appeared before the official update.

When finalised, the update will be free to existing customers. Parallels Desktop for Mac currently costs $US79.99.