Parallels Desktop 6.0 Switch to Mac Edition review

Software lets you flit between Mac and Windows with little fuss

Parallels Desktop 6.0 Switch to Mac Edition allows users who routinely use both Mac OS X and Windows systems to migrate their Windows system onto a Mac as a virtual machine.

If you've got Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later, Parallels Desktop 6 lets you create new virtual machines from just about any operating system, and run them in parallel with Mac OS X.

Windows support covers Windows 95, NT, 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. Windows Server support covers Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008, including R2 versions. Linux support includes Debian, CentOS, Fedora, Mandriva, OPENSuse, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Red Hat Enterprise, Ubuntu and specific Linux kernel versions. Versions of FreeBSD, MS-DOS, OS/2, OpenSolaris and Solaris are also supported.

As well as compatibility with Apple's Snow Leopard OS and Windows 7, version 6 also introduces support for Windows Aero GUI, multiple monitor support, and the ability to use Mac track pad gestures and remap the keyboard shortcuts to correspond to those on Mac OS X.

Other useful new features include support for accelerated graphics in virtual environments and the ability to assign up to eight CPU cores and 8GB of system memory to a virtual machine. However, there is no support yet for Apple's 12-core Mac Pro desktops.

We installed a 14-day trial of the system on a MacBook Air laptop featuring an Intel 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of DDR3 system memory with a 1066MHz frontside bus, and 256GB SSD storage.

Parallels offers three ways to migrate Windows operating systems across to Mac OS X: over a standard 100Mbit/s LAN connection, over a direct point-to-point USB connection, and finally using a USB-connected storage device as an intermediary. We tried all three methods.

First, we tried to migrate the Windows 7 Ultimate OS running on our Labs test laptop, which has an Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 2.6GHz processor, with 4GB of DDR2-666 system memory and a Western Digital 320GB SATA hard disk. The hard disk space occupied by the Windows OS running on this system was 89GB, and more than 100 applications were installed.

With all methods users have to install and run the Parallels transporter agent on the Windows system to be migrated. Users will also need any software activation keys that they used to install software on the Windows system, as well as the Windows OS activation key.

Migration over a LAN connection
Trying to migrate over a network connection, the biggest problem we encountered was changing the firewall settings correctly on the anti-malware system we were also reviewing at the time - AVG's Internet Security Business Edition 2011.

We managed to open the right network ports up and specify the correct IP addresses to migrate our Windows OS, but in a business environment this type of exercise is unlikely to be acceptable given the security implications.

Migration over a point-to-point USB connection
The next method we used was a direct USB link using male-to-male USB cable we had hanging around from an older version of Desktop Parallels. We successfully migrated a Windows XP Professional OS from a 10-year old Elonex desktop PC using this method.

We did get a pop-up at one point asking us to re-check the USB cable was inserted correctly, presumably because one of the systems had hibernated or gone into sleep mode. Eventually we did get the migration to work though.

Migration through hard disk storage intermediary
Lastly we migrated a Windows 7 Ultimate virtual image by transferring it to a USB-connected Seagate 250GB SATA hard disk, and then getting the MacBook to import this image using Parallels. Data transfer to the MacBook Air was significantly faster than when using Windows USB connections.

The problem with using 100Mbit/s LAN and USB 2.0 connections is that the speed of the migration is slow. For example, a test migration of a Windows 7 Ultimate operating system that occupied 33GB of hard disk space took about 40 minutes using the point-to-point USB 2.0 cable. Gigabit networks or new USB 3.0 systems would reduce this significantly.

Running Windows on a Mac
After system migration, Parallels configured our 172GB Windows 7 Ultimate image automatically and then we could boot the Windows OS on the MacBook Air.

The first thing we saw was a pop-up saying that the OS was not genuine, and users will need their original Windows activation key at some point to re-activate the OS again on their Mac systems.

Another problem we encountered was that our Windows icons were not how they appeared on the original Windows desktop. This was due to the difference in screen resolution between our original desktop and the window in which the Parallels virtual machine image was running on the MacBook.

Although the system was usable, there were times when there was a significant lag in performance, not surprising since the Windows VM was taking 1GB of system memory from the Mac (from a total of 2GB).

Mac users wishing to run virtual machines would be well advised to buy as much memory as possible with their systems.

The other OS we migrated was a Windows XP Professional one, occupying 8GB on the hard disk of a 10-year old Elonex desktop PC, which had an Intel 500MHz Pentium III processor and 384MB of 100MHz system memory. This Windows VM ran far better on the MacBook Air, and applications that were slow on the Elonex system were much quicker in the Parallels VM.

A key ability in Parallels Desktop is the Coherence feature, which allows individual Windows applications to be fired up, without invoking the full Windows desktop.

As well as the Windows migration application, Parallels also bundles in a couple of extra useful applications, Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Mac and Windows, Acronis True Image 2010 for backup and recovery, and Acronis Disk Director 2011 for managing virtual hard disks.