Parallels Desktop 9.0 (Mac/PC)

Superlative. Works as well as you secretly hope it will. I have DropBox on my Mac, but can use it with windows. I have OneDrive on the PC and can read and edit Onedrive folders from the mac. I can copy and paste between clipboards. I can back up my entire windows in one file, and I can move to a new mac in a very short period of time. All whilst living in the security of a TimeMachine backup. Try out installs on a copy, keep your working PC setup without risks. Use iMovie and other creative software that the PC simply cannot compete with. I use Windows full time, but still appreciate the usefulness of FaceTime without having to use the pad. Excellent, excellent software. But best on a more modern unit, not older ones. My Windows laptop on a mac now lasts a lot longer on battery too. Brilliant change for me. No issues so far.

I got this as I have a new mac Air 13 and we have moved to 365 in our office and I wanted to be able to use all the great features of Office 2013 (Mac for Office 2011 is missing a lot of the really great bits).Anyway started out okay but it was slow using it day to day. It made my Mac run sluggish and there was a real difference in running win7 and office 2013 compared to the bog standard £300 HP laptops we have. So I increased my ram to 4gb for windows (of the 8gb available) this made some difference and speed-ed things up a bit. However it would crash on a regular basis and I would have to reboot about once a day due to some issue, it was like Jobs was fighting Gates on my machine and they just didn't really get on they just tolerated each other.But I cant get One-drive Pro to work and I cant get any help with this from MS or parallels to solve this issue. The my IT support cocked up the settings and Win7 now only runs in its own window and wont switch back to coherence view, again parallels were unhelpful (I am still in my 30 days support at this point). Update on this I figured out how to switch back its quite simple but unless you know how it makes parallels a bit o a fiddle.For the money spent I would have been better just installing win7 via boot camp using that OS at work and IOS at home as I tend to stick to them that way while there.Everything in life is a compromise and I love the Mac OS (been a windows user since 1990) but at work it was a bit of a pain and it was slowing me down, plus all other users bar 1 were on PCs and I head up IT so found it difficult to support and advise them. I did see parallels as a way to do this but now feel its just an expensive and time consuming add on that eats resources and rather than making my like simpler it just made it more complicated.I would only recommend getting this if you need to switch between the two OS but I have to say with 99% of the real world in windows I think boot-camp offers a real alternative and you can switch back via a re-boot.Update May 2014 parallels slowed me down too much and as I wanted all the experience of Office 2013 I decided to install Win 7 on boot camp and dump the parallels experience. This has been much better for me in my work situation, I got a Mac because Ive been a Apple fan for about 10 years since my 1st iPod and I love their products. The Mac is super fast and light and a joy to use but to have parallels was a bit like get your dream sports car with the lovely sounding V12 then retro fitting an electric motor so you can avoid congestion charges.The way I see it there are pros and cons to this.ProsMy Mac is a lot faster in Win7 than Win7 via parallelsI can still use Mavericks I just need to rebootFor me using 365 at work I now have Office 2013Office 2013 is better than office for Mac 2011Win7 is a great OS for work and in my office that's what everyone else uses (might not be the same where you work)for me it does everything I need to do. More so than Mavericks in that environment.Doing it this way around there is nothing I cannot do in my job day to day using Win7 and 365.ConsMavericks is so nice to use I do miss itI have a windows Mac which seems a bit wrong, not sure why?Sometimes the reboot doesn't work if I leave my machine to sleep so I have to hard reboot. It is however more stable than parallels and I have to reboot less.Parallels may suit you and your environment but as the world of work is almost 90% PC you might find like me its simpler to use boot-camp and win7 all day long. So overall I think I wasted my money on parallels as I didn't need it, I don't regret that as I wanted to try it but as the review says don't believe the hype, I shouldn't have. I am lucky I have another Mac at home so I can use the wonderful iOS interface there or I could just reboot my work machine. I wouldn't recommend buying Parallels from my experience.

Not as simple to use as I thought it would be. Instructions not clear ro me and have not yet got it properly installed.

If you have recently converted to a Macbook from a Windows machine you might have a fair number of programs that you'd like to keep using. There are two ways to go about this.First create a dual boot hard drive, partition the hard drive and install Windows on the second partition. The downside to this is that each time you want to go from OSX to Windows you will have to reboot your Macbook.Parallels allows you to access the Windows partition as a virtual drive within OSX, no more rebooting but still leaves you with the option of booting into Windows for more memory intensive programs.There are some minor disadvantages to this, some programs will run a little slower because there is more memory usage, so I wouldn't recommend playing games through Parallels.It is also easy to transfer files between both operating systems.Parallels is renown as the best program for this, but is version 9 really that much better than version 7 and 8? If you are on version 7 then yes I would probably recommend the upgrade, but it isn't significantly faster or better than version 8 in normal usage using Win7. I know version 8 also claimed to work with Windows 8 but I'd assume that this new version is a little better optimised for it, but it's not something I can really comment on.Personally, I have steered clear of Win8.I'm one of those people who likes to use the most up to date software, I'm a sucker for it really, but that's me. However, there is really no real killer feature that makes this product a must buy over the previous version. I don't think that you'd see any obvious speed increases that you would notice.It is a little more refined, but if you have version 8 and Win7 I'd wait until the next update.Still it doesn't detract from the fact that this is a great product.

Superb. The best of both worlds. So easy and so quick to load. Best piece of software I have ever purchased.

I wanted to install a Windows on my early January 2015 MBPr and was at first doubted would this version work on mine. I was in between Parallel and BootCamp but I've been loving OS as much and at the same time need use Windows for some reasons. Since the price wasnt that pricey if compared to others around, I thought I should just give it a go. I have no disk slot on my macbook and like most of you MB users, this would be a disadvantage when it comes to installing via DVD/CD. Worry not! The seller packed the whole CD and you can simply install Windows online, there's sufficient information on the pack, and all in all, I just couldnt say how much I've been loving Parallel on my Macbook and this has been the best decision I've made in my life. Thank you!

You end up paying for every upgrade once Apple or Microsoft upgrade their own packages. I had rather paid a bit more for a longer time subscription or just £20 every year. The time will come when you can run two OS on one machine natively and that is not going to take long.

Thanks