Parallels "comes with" Kaspersky anti-virus software and since I’d had a few issues with AVG on my Vista host I decided that at least Kaspersky must have been tested to run on Parallels. Why do I make these assumptions? 😉 Anyway to install it you simply select the menu item from Parallels. It tells you it will reboot and sure enough it does. But then nothing else happens. I tried this a couple of times and no sign of a Kaspersky tool anywhere. So I tied it again but this time I didn’t allow the autorun to…run. I then right-clicked on the setup exe (kissexe or something) and said ‘run as administrator’. That rebooted but this time it acutally installed. Hurray….good grief.

 

Downloaded the Beta of Remote Desktop Client 2.0. It is loads better than the previous one. A quick tip, if you want to use console mode then simply type /console after the name of the machine, i.e.

MyRemoteMachine /console

It hasn’t been without problems, currently I only get a blank screen after a tried to start in full screen mode. I’ll see what happens after a reboot.
[Edit] Setting the colour depth down and then back-again seemed to stop that problem.

Updated to v3 today with the promise of DirectX support. Hmm, not very impressed. To be honest I think I should have stayed with previous version. I enabled DirectX but Vista carried on running it its non DirectX mode, I guess that cause it wants a DirectX 10 card rather than 8 that Parallels support. I used to be able to run Majong but now it crashes. Also the full screen mode seems blurry although to be fair when I went via the menu it was fine.

[Edit] – I think I’ve sussed the blurry full screen. When you go full screen it seems to preserve the resolution you have in the window mode. Therefore you have to manually adjust the screen resolution to the correct maximum size…I’m sure the old one handled this automatically

Convergence v2 didn’t seem all that different either, although you can now launch applications from the other OS, e.g. open a Word Doc on the Mac and it launch Office in Vista…or something. I don’t use that.

The Transport feature looks interesting, it seems that it can create Parallel machines from physical or other VM applications. I may have to try that.

The Explorer is quite nice too, it allows you to examine a disk without running a Parallel machine. Quite nice if you’re trying to conserve battery but need a file.

Still I think I’d rather have kept my money, but maybe they’ll be some patches soon.

[Edit] IE7 now crashes a lot, I’m not sure why this is, possibly a security changes, maybe DirectX related…it is very annoying.
[Edit] Ah it looks like it is DirectX related (maybe something to do with Flash adverts?), if I turn DirectX off the sites work fine, on they crash IE. Also there is a entry in Event log that looks very much like a DirectX related DLL. However, the copy from Event Log now crashes so I haven’t copied the text!

I must confess two things, 1. I enjoy my Mac book 2. I can’t stand people that glorify the Mac. I’ve owned Mac’s for about nine years and subscribed to MacUser for the same amount. I’ve seen the Mac go from an "also ran" to a potential leader of the pack. All through this period people have written in MacUser saying how great the Mac is compared to the Windows PC or rather just the PC. This months edition contained a letter that really made my blood boil. Basically the letter was saying that this guy was telling a family member to ditch their PC because of all the trouble they had with a virus. The premise to switch was that you won’t get a virus on a Mac. How stupid. Sure statistically I bet there are a thousand Windows based viruses for ever Mac one, but this is all about popularity rather than a secure system. I’ve long argued that rather than heap praise on one side or the other both Apple and Microsoft produce annoying operating systems and applications. Their hardware isn’t always that much better either. My MS Force Feedback joystick failed to work on XP, two Apple Macs were delivered dead-on-arrival, Ipod Nano scratches by simply looking at it, OSX is black or white OS, either your totally pandered by UIs or your down in the guts of Unix, Vista attempts to secure itself by panicking the user into never installing anything! What I’m saying is stop the my OS is better than your and start asking your preferred vendor to produce better quality products.

The real choice between PCs and Macs is flexibility vs. out-of-the-box compatibility. Mac’s only contain a very restricted set of hardware, basically you could say that the only options are how much memory or disk space you have (yeah ok there are more choices but it’s not far from the truth). This means the a Mac OS only has to worry about a very small set of hardware and hence the chance of a dodgy hardware drive getting into the mix is greatly reduced. Whereas PCs come in all sorts of permutations, some with downright cheap and nasty kit. Windows bravely attempts to cope with all of this, but with all these permutations of kit getting a conflict is greatly increased. So for me, when I want to build my optimum machine I go the PC route, when I want something that will be pretty dependable without me doing loads of researching then a Mac would be a good choice.

Ok rant over, now onto the title of this blog entry. Apple have made a
very big push at the home user to switch by concentrating on what the
average Joe user wants. Pictures, music, internet browsing and email.
Ok so you get that with Windows too but why should that matter?
(Although Apple charge for their email services). We swallow the slick marketing and go an buy our pretty iMac and put it into our homes, in fact it’s so versatile we put it into our living rooms/lounges. Great, we’re thrilled. But hang on what’s this on the horizon? A device that sits in our living rooms/lounges you say. Plays music, browse the internet, email, etc? Apple have been so keen to market the Mac as a simple users tool that stuck the Mac in the middle of the road where the consoles trucks travel up and down. Next gen consoles will do everything that the Mac campaign says you want from a computer. Plus they play cool games…hmm the choice of what to switch to looks obvious now, I don’t want a PC/Mac I want Nintendo, Playstation, 360…

Finally managed to install Vista on the Mac via Parallels Desktop. I had some initial trouble getting the installer to use the .iso file but after quiting and restarting it worked fine. The result…very good, so much quicker than Vista on Virtual PC on a PC which I still can’t quite get my head around. The network didn’t work at first but once I’d installed the Parallels components onto Vista then all was good. The only down side is no DirectX3d so you don’t get the fancy bit…oh well I usually turn all that stuff off anyway!