Likelihood to Recommend It is very well suited to large, diverse organizations looking to quickly deploy applications virtually to its employee base. They give immense control to system Admins and allow users to more easily install the applications they need. They also allow users quick access to their applications, even during migration.
Read full review I often get asked, why not the "free" stuff (VirtualBox), and/or why not VMWare. VirtualBox, etc. are not as performant for interactive usage. I think they are fine for small applications, perhaps some enterprise app usage, but for developers, it's not good enough. VMWare has become too enterprisey and lacks some of the user-friendly stuff that Parallels focuses on. Ultimately, for developer types running OSes for deep tasks, Parallels is unrivaled.
Read full review Pros It allowed us to isolate applications so that they did not adversely interact with other applications. They served as a virtual machine while we managed the migration to a new OS. They helped us decrease malicious attacks because web browsers operating within a container could be terminated if an attack occurred. They allowed us to quickly deploy applications across a diverse, global organization. Read full review File Transfer - You can easily transfer files between Parallels virtualized desktops and the host desktop either through Copy and Paste functionality, or Drag and Drop. You can also configure shared folders. Switch Between Virtual and Host Desktop - You can configure swipe gestures on a MacBook Pro to be able to switch between the virtualized and host desktop. You can also launch apps from the OS X Taskbar. Performance - Apps in Parallels run quite smoothly on my 2015 MacBook Pro, as of 2020. Considering they are running on a 5-year-old computer, I give Parallels top marks for performance. Read full review Cons Container access and restrictions were a bit cumbersome to set up. We would frequently have users report containers failing to work properly due to file size. There was very little documentation we could provide to users during onboarding Read full review The ability to do snapshots, backups, and other types of branching for VMs is a little confusing and takes a bit to get used to The Parallels tools frequently pop up windows advertising functionality, while this is helpful at times it can also happen when you are doing a presentation or typing in a password. Careful using the VMs on a shared cloud drive such as Dropbox or OneDrive, there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of files which are updated when running a VM and this can clog up your Dropbox or OneDrive sync for minutes to hours even on a 2gb connection. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Users are familiar with the application which will keep us going for a little while. However since we are seeing a decline for a need for the software, I wouldn't be surprised to find that this answer changes dramatically in the near future. We would probably keep it to some extent, but we would probably reduce our licensing count.
Read full review Usability It has a good integration, including the connection of peripherals. Taking files back and forth works well and I can attach my Home drive as a network drive in Windows. There is even integration with iCloud and other macOS services. There are also a few different display modes which are useful and fleixible (coherence, windowed, full-screen with multiple screens)
Read full review Support Rating So, this rating is a little skewed toward older behavior from Parallels, as I haven't had to contact them recently. However, in an older version of Parallels, an "update" included pop-ups urging users to upgrade to the latest version, implying that their current version wouldn't work for the latest MacOS. I found it very frustrating to be getting ads for a new version of the software in a version I had already paid for. I contacted support about this and got a generic, uncaring response. It was pretty disappointing.
Read full review Implementation Rating The only advice I can provide is think about who is using the product and build the image based on the true needs of the user.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We went with Desktop Containers because we had a former colleague recommend it. However, we do feel we made the right choice for our organization.
Read full review Main two features that made the balance decission go to the Parallels Desktop were the possibility to pause the Windows partition easily (allowing to consume less resources in Mac and save battery) and the other one is the user interface feature called "Coherence" with allows you to show the Windows application windows as if they were native to the
macOS , allowing for a better user experience.
Read full review Return on Investment We were able to migrate to a different OS 50% more quickly than in the past. We saw a dramatic decrease in malicious attacks while using this product. Our users were able to more quickly get access to the products they needed. We no longer needed to worry about applications not playing nice with others since they were isolated Read full review Avoid extra costs: majority of users have a Mac, so if they needed to dod something that is Windows related, it will require to users have an extra computer to do that tasks, and this have a lot of costs Developers have more concerns how websites behaves on Windows only browsers, which increased the satisfaction of users Read full review ScreenShots Parallels Desktop for Mac Screenshots