- Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac - Instant License. Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac is designed specifically with Mac users in mind who want to run Windows programs and applications on their Apple devices.
- Compares the speed of an Intel Mac using Windows XP with Parallels Desktop for Mac and Apple Boot Camp.
Parallels Desktop for Mac is a hardware emulation virtualization software. This version also allowed users to boot their existing Boot Camp Windows XP partitions, which eliminated the need to have multiple Windows installations on their Mac.
I read through your splendid tutorial on installing Windows XP with Apple’s Boot Camp product (see boot camp help) but that’s not for me. I don’t want to have to reboot each time I want to try something out with a Windows app on my Mac. I’ve read about something called the Parallels Desktop and am hoping you can explain how to install it and how to use it so I can run Windows in parallel with Mac OS X? Thanks.
I have to admit, I’ve been using Macs since the digital stone age and still get frustrated that I have to buy PCs so I can run Windows with any decent results. I’ve run Microsoft’s Virtual PC, for example, but it’s a dog and even when you have lots of patience it’s pretty difficult to work within that environment even if you have the most powerful computer and least demanding application.
Further, I think that Apple’s Boot Camp program is incredibly smart and have been dual booting Macs for quite a while, though usually into different flavors of Linux or related. I even had my tri-booting Mac laptop make it to the cover of a Linux magazine!
Still, though, the idea of running Windows — or another OS — within Mac OS X through what’s called a “virtual machine” or “virtualization” solution, is too good to miss. That’s why I was thrilled when Parallels released its Parallels Desktop, a full Windows-capable virtualization package for less than $80. Nice!
Just like with Apple’s Boot Camp, there are some specific requirements that you need to meet before you can use Parallels Desktop, however, chief among them the requirement that you have an Intel-based Macintosh. You’ll also want at least a few gig of free disk space and at least 1GB of memory for performance reasons. They also recommend you have the very latest version of Mac OS X, which is easily done with the Software Update capability on the Macs.
Let’s Get Started!
Your first step isn’t to download the application, believe it or not, but rather to decide whether you want to get a free 15-day product key or go ahead and buy the program and get a full product key. I suggest the latter, honestly, because it’s very cool and well worth the money. Now, download Parallels Desktop.
Once you get the 23MB disk image, open it up and you’ll see a pretty typical set of icons:
Don’t just click on the installer, however. Spend a few minutes reading through the User Guide included to double-check that everything’s compatible with your configuration. Then you’ll find that the installer is quite typical of Mac installers, with a license to accept, a hard disk to select for the installation target, and a few buttons to click. It’s so typical I’m not going to even include a screenshot here!
Once the installation is finished, it’s time to start the application, which you’ll find in a folder called “Parallels” in your Application directory. Click on the program and you’ll see a rather intimidating first screen:
Don’t panic. Instead, click on the “New VM…” button on the bottom left to launch the New VM Wizard. (VM = virtual machine, remember).
This will help you through the steps necessary to create a new “virtual” computer that will let you install the operating system of your choice, Microsoft Windows XP.
Your first decision will be to determine if you want to create a typical VM, create a custom VM, or create a blank VM:
As the wizard recommends, I also encourage you to choose the default configuration. It’s easy to tweak things afterwards, after all.
Since we’re doing a default configuration, we need to specify the OS type and version:
Poke around here a bit, you’ll be astonished at the number of different operating systems the Parallels Desktop supports!! Oh, and not to state anything too obvious, but remember that these are just default preferences. You still need the OS itself for installation.
Almost done with the Wizard.
You need to specify the name of your virtual machine, and where it should be stored on your disk:
Since this is your first VM, Parallels will need to create some directories too, as you’ll quickly learn:
No worries. Click “OK” and the virtual machine for Windows XP will be created and ready to install.
Ready to Install
Ah, well, we’re almost ready to install, as you can now see when you quit the Wizard and get back to the main Parallels Desktop view:
What’s wrong? Too little memory (RAM) allocated for my tastes. Easily fixed, by clicking on the word “Memory”, which takes you to the darn useful Configuration Editor:
Slide the control along to the recommended amount (or more, your call), and we’re finally ready to roll!
Installing Windows XP, Really
The first step to actually installing an OS is to insert the Windows install CD (DVD, actually) into your computer, then push the “play” button (rightward-facing triangle) in Parallels to start up the program with the new VM system. The system will prompt for a Parallels Desktop license code (which you did remember to request, right?). Enter that, and after a minute or two, your screen will look like this as you’re welcomed to the Windows XP Setup program:
This should already seem pretty cool if you’re a Mac person, because this is running within Mac OS X, yeah!
Now you can step through the standard steps of a Windows XP install in fairly short order:
You can work with the one unpartitioned space as-is, and when you get to the next screen I recommend you choose NTFS rather than FAT so that you have a higher performance Windows virtual machine. Note, however, that FAT is the file system that Mac OS X can more easily navigate if you want to actually access files within the Parallels virtual partition.
Continuing along…
Somehow, “exciting new look” probably isn’t intended to refer to the fact that we’re installing Windows XP within the Mac OS X environment, but it’s amusing nonetheless, isn’t it?
At this point you’ll go through some rudimentary Windows XP configuration questions, about language, region, and related. Finally, you’ll hit the second of the legal interludes in this process:
If you don’t have a valid product key for Windows XP (or whatever OS you’re installing) you’ll be stuck here, though you can try running for the 30 days allowed before you have to register your OS product.
A few more simple configuration options about timezone, current date and time, and you’re finally into the installation phase of Windows XP, which can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours. I don’t have the patience to time it, so I’m not sure. Instead, it’s a great time for a chai break at Starbucks 🙂
When I come back, Windows is mostly installed and it’s just a matter of specifying a few more configuration changes. One thing that happens is that the virtual machine reboots itself and then automatically adjusts the screen resolution to escape the 640×480 hell that we were confined to for the initial installation process. Now we get a glorious Windows logo and boot screen within Parallels Desktop itself:
Now you need to do just a wee bit more Windows configuration, including what I consider a critical step:
You always want to select “automatic update” unless you’re a complete Windows guru and know exactly what you’re doing.
Next you’ll need to indicate if you want to register your version of Windows XP with Microsoft. If you’re going to use this for a long period of time, you might as well do that. Otherwise, select “no” and you’ll be reminded later when you’re perhaps ready to do so.
That’s basically all there is to it. We’re done. In just a few seconds Windows XP reboots and you end up with the familiar background screen, task bar, START button, and much more. All within the world of Mac OS X. Sweet indeed:
It’s not quite as snappy as Apple’s Boot Camp, as I’d expect, but it’s certainly a big improvement over the old sluggish world of Virtual PC.
That should get you going with Parallels Desktop. Questions? You might want to check out the Parallels Blog or pop into the Parallels Forum where users and developers compare notes.
Hope you’re up and running. I know that I’m delighted to have Parallels Desktop on my computer, finally.
Oh, and once you do have it running, don’t forget to also install Parallels Tools, a must-include package of utilities. Learn how here: Install Parallels Tools on Intel Mac.
Let’s Stay In Touch!
I use a MacBook Air as my primary machine, and the 128GB SSD means space is precious. To save about 10 GB, I've been running Parallels with a Windows XP VM off an external USB hard drive, which performs as well in everyday use as running the VM off the internal SSD.
So, I bought a tiny 32GB USB 2.0 flash drive, plugged it into the MacBook Air, formatted it first as ExFAT (which was slow), then as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (which was also slow), and copied over my VM file, and ran Parallels off it.
My full experience is documented here: http://www.midwesternmac.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/running-windows-xp-vm
Straight file copies are really fast — 30 MB/sec read (solid the whole time), and 10-11 MB/sec write (solid the whole time). But I noticed that once XP started running, the disk access rates were in the low KB ranges.
Are USB flash drives really that poor at random access, or could I possibly be missing something (the format of the flash drive, etc.?)?
Of note, I've tried the following, to no great effect:
- Formatting the drive as either ExFAT or Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- Unplugging all other USB devices and turning off Bluetooth (which runs on the right-side-port USB bus).
- Plugging in the flash drive either direct in the right side port, or the left side port, or into a USB 2.0 hub
3 Answers
I was just going to comment with this, but ran out of room...
USB flash drives are very poor for random access read and write unless you specifically purchase a USB flash drive for speed. You'd know if you had a 'fast' USB thumb drive since you probably would have paid two or three times more for it. This versus this. 70MB/s & 39MB/s versus 155MB/s & 150MB/s.
The real issue is that the USB 2.0 port on the Macbook Air maxes out. The theoretical maximum data rate in USB 2.0 is 480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s) per controller and is shared amongst all attached devices. So even if you get a 150MB/s USB drive, you'll top out at around 60MB/s.
I'm referring to usb flash sticks in this answer since if you are okay with something larger, you could get a SATA SSD and put it into a USB3+SATA enclosure.
Out of the bazillion USB flash sticks and drives, all but handful use a combination of low cost flash solution (single mlc) and a dumb controller with no cache ram. For flash technology to be more usable, look at what's inside SSD, there's typically several chips/dies, controller and cache. This cache serves the purpose that allows to take in multiple pieces of data and concurrently write them. But if you have single cheap mlc solution then you can't write concurrently.
There are some benchmarks out there and I've spent full day digging through various reviews and benchmarks. It appears that any single moment, there are from zero to two models on the market that have the technology in them that enables better random access (writes).
Here's a site with some benchmarks. In the 16 and 32 GB categories I looked, this is the overall fastest usb2/3 flash memory stick.
Kingston isn't entirely terrible company, when they discontinued this product, they were nice enough to make a new product with the same name and crap performance but did add a 'g2' or 'gen2' there so you have ability to avoid paying the gen 1 price for much inferior 'gen 2' product.
This is quite typical in the biz: switch the components to worse performing ones soon after positive reviews are out. Like, recently I got a Corsair SSD and reviewers all reviewed different chips than Corsair sent to the retail trade channels. All the Corsair Performance Pro reviews are invalid - they show and tell the device has 32 nm flash but since 24 nm is cheaper, Corsair switched to that last year while still handing 32 nm units to reviewers. I always buy based of reviews but it often bites me in the arse: In 2005 I got LG LCD. Reviewers got IPS panel and I got TN panel. Same model number!
Parallel On Mac
I can confirm that Lexar JumpDrive S45 USB 3.0 128 GB flash drive (read 150 MB/s, write 45 MB/s) also suffers from very poor random access performance. I've tried to use it in Parallels Desktop (MacBook Pro Retina 13' Late 2013) with no luck: either ExFAT or HFS+ gives almost unresponsive VM. FORGET IT for that purpose.
