Parallels Desktop is the best choice for running multiple OS on my Mac
I use Parallels Desktop to access Windows on my Mac. There are eLearning and local government design applications that require the …
Starting at $49.99 per license
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What is Parallels Desktop?
Parallels Desktop is a virtual user session solution built to run Windows on Macintosh computers without rebooting. It is designed for OS X Yosemite with one-click tuning.
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Popular Features
- File transfer (23)9.898%
- Screen sharing (9)9.090%
- Access to sleeping/powered-off computers (10)8.787%
- Centralized management dashboard (11)8.585%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Parallels Desktop 16
$49.99
On Premise
per license
Parallels Desktop Pro Edition
$49.99
On Premise
per license/per year
Parallels Desktop
$79.99
On Premise
per license
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac - VM Explorer Demo
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What is Parallels Desktop?
Parallels Desktop Video
How to Run Windows on Mac : Parallels Desktop for Mac
Parallels Desktop Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Parallels Desktop is a virtual user session solution built to run Windows on Macintosh computers without rebooting. It is designed for OS X Yosemite with one-click tuning.
Reviewers rate File transfer highest, with a score of 9.8.
The most common users of Parallels Desktop are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(84)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 30)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
- Windows loads and runs even faster than on a PC
- I can access any OS from within my macOS session.
- It does not consume too many resources and I can multitask.
- The use of external storage devices are always seen as local hard disks and this makes it difficult to manage certain mobile information.
- The weight of the Windows load files are very large and it is like having a complete computer with the OS loaded on the hard disk of my local machine.
March 27, 2024
Experience Parallels Desktop
- virtualization
- easy access to documents
- easy access to apps
- interface
- price
- support
March 26, 2024
Ultimate Decision Yes or No? YES!
- Gives me access to Windows 11
- it's extremely responsive, very fast.
- user friendly
- has a great layout
- overall look feel and use cases are highly recommended by me!
- Maybe an interactive tutorial video for new users to click along with the video for the video to continue as a teach guide, learning windows was difficult at first!
- Ability to find it online as the tool i needed to use rather than attempting to download malware to use windows 11 from the web.
- maybe a built in chatbot for when you're using parallels you can ask questions and assist with tasks in the platform solution.
February 22, 2024
Desktop virtualization with power and ease.
- Quickly share resources between the host machine and guest. Great for when we process data in MacOS and then need it in a virtual machine.
- Coherence mode is great for a lot of users. They don’t even realize the app isn’t running natively on the host operating system.
- The user interface for managing virtual machines isn’t my favorite.
January 22, 2024
Parallels Desktop saved me from buying another computer
- Runs Windows in a virtual environment
- Does not take up a lot of additional overhead
- Runs fast and seamless
- Easy to setup and use
- There are a lot of configuration options that can seem overwhelming.
- Some features are not clearly explained.
- Frequent updates sometimes interrupt workflow.
January 18, 2024
Parallels Desktop - The Best Virtual Machine Software for Mac
- Easy to use: even on first interaction, users feel that is really intuitive how can be used
- Good support
- Fast and reliable comparing to other tools
- For our company use case, the only thing that can suggest to improve on Parallels is to improve a little bit more memory consumption - when lots of processes are running on the host machine, it can be noticed that memory consumption is a little bit higher than what is desired, which is understandable, since is virtualization
- Installs new VMs including OS configuration.
- Integrates mac and windows seamlessly.
- It can be configured to run a VM "the old-fashioned way" or simply let you run applications no matter the OS.
- Having to buy a new upgrade whenever Apple updates the OS with its yearly releases seems a bit excessive.
- The integration features between Windows and Mac are enabled by default, which can clutter both sides; I would rather it was not default.
January 16, 2024
Parallels Desktop saved me from buying a PC... AWESOME!
- Toad for SQL
- Microsoft Access
- Generally playing nice with my iMac.
- Windows 10 is awesome but 11 seems a bit off.
- It really is awesome all the way around!
- Installation process is clean and simple
- The "Coherence" option allows for seamless user interface integration with Mac OS
- Sharing files across the different partitions is transparent for the user
- Windows partition requires often reboot, as some user interface features have issues
- Updates to newer version require additional licensing
- No additional suggestions
January 10, 2024
Parallels Desktop Review on a MacBook Pro M3 Max
- Fast Windows Emulation
- Multiple OS Support
- Parallels Tools with many useful apps
- Ability to unify MacOS and Windows
- 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.
January 10, 2024
Superb software for cross environment compatibility
- Windows integration
- Multiple operating systems
- Sandboxing
- Size of update installers
March 21, 2022
If you need to run Windows Apps and are Mac User, buy Parallels. Best decision you can make.
- Windows (or other OS) virtualization on machines running MacOS
- Using Windows apps side by side your Mac apps
- Coherence Mode allows you to hide the Windows Virtual Machine and only interact with the Windows Apps (no Windows desktop in browser window)
- I think that over time it slows down, but this is really linked to Windows bloating.
- I think Coherence Mode could improve slightly...how the windows search window populates and moves around sometimes is weird. (this could be changed in settings, but I'm not sure)
- Memory Usage optimization (again, they do a great job, so I'm nitpicking here)
December 20, 2021
Works if you need it. Will make your MacBook an inferno.
- It allows easy back and forth between operating systems. Can access all my Mac documents within my Parallels [Desktop] instance.
- [It] is a fully functioning Windows operating system on my MacBook.
- My MacBook gets incredibly hot when I run Parallels [Desktop]. Like scorching hot.
- My MacBook's battery only lasts 1 hour when running Parallels [Desktop}. Normally will last over 4 hours.
November 10, 2021
Best Application of Virtual Machine for MacOS
- Virtualization
- Customisable
- Safe place for external files
- Security
- Expensive
- Need an stable version for Windows
November 02, 2021
Parallels give you power, functionality and a smooth interface for all your desktop virtualization needs
- Takes good advantage of hardware
- Virtualizes very efficiently
- Is fast and responsive
- Allows virtually seamless integration of overlapping OS'
- It could launch faster
- the licensing model forces upgrades often
- Has a relatively high resource footprint
November 02, 2021
Parallels Desktop solve numerous issue for MAC users
- Emulated a Window environment
- Reflecting the MAC finder/file structure
- Runs fast and stable (doesn't crash)
- Occasionally have restart issues and get stuck on a black screen
- Windows passwords don't sync with OSX passwords
- Exhaust Fan always runs heavier when using Parallels
- has issues handling multiple monitors (3 or more)
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Allows seamless work in both Mac environments and Windows environments
- Saves having to reboot into "Boot Camp"
- Saves having to purchase separate machines for Mac and Windows
- Support
- Stability
- Ease of set-up and installation
- 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.
- Support for more versions of OS X. For instance, I would like to install Snow Leopard, but it is not supported. Parallels supports Snow Leopard Server but it is prohibitively expensive now, having gone up in price due to rarity and also likely because of people needing it due to the lack of support for normal Snow Leopard.
- Compatibility issues with certain versions of OS X, meaning you have to continually upgrade Parallels for it to work with the current version of OS X. It would be better if older versions of Parallels continued to work bug-free with updated versions of OS X.
- Lack of support for gaming and multimedia - The newest version of DirectX is not supported at the time of this writing, and some games that run at 90-110 FPS on host architecture or BootCamp run at only 20 FPS in Parallels.
January 24, 2020
Life Saver
- I like how it is a separate entity from the workings of my Mac. I can access the programs on Windows in a separate section on my desktop.
- Parallels allows Windows to run seamlessly.
- Parallels uses a lot of RAM, so unless your machine has 16 GB of RAM, it will probably run slowly.
January 17, 2020
Parallels for Windows Browser Testing
- Easy to use
- Easy to setup
- Support for all major guest operating systems
- Good integration within macOS
- Good performance
- Expensive
- Pricing and release model forces yearly upgrades
- Some default settings can be undesirable if wanting to reduce integration with macOS
January 16, 2020
Parallels is an excellent choice for local Virtual Machines
- Ease of setup
- Responsive
- Easily configurable
- Needs better error messages
- Better handling of network loss
- Better handling of USB
October 31, 2019
Parallels Lets Your Users Dump Windows with Coherence Mode
- Simple, intuitive Windows virtualization: Parallels makes it easy to create a guest operating system on your Mac. From there, users can easily access legacy business applications that work only on Windows.
- Coherence Mode: Allows Windows applications to run side by side with Mac applications in MacOS—this gives users a more cohesive environment to work in, enabling them to be productive and not requiring them to switch contexts constantly.
- Performance: Parallels continues to focus on enhanced performance with every new release.
- Price: While Parallels offers great functionality and support for their price, there are free options available that satisfy my needs, namely, VirtualBox.
- 3D Performance: This is less of a knock against Parallels, and rather a shortcoming of virtualization in general - it's hard to get "bare metal" performance from a virtual machine when using 3D applications.
- Upgrade Justification: For some time, Parallels has struggled to justify an upgrade to its users, other than "compatibility" with the latest MacOS. This continues to be the case.
- You don't need to switch between host and guest system like other virtual systems.
- Apps from the guest system shows in menu which makes them seamless to use.
- Even the most resource intensive software run smoothly such as visual studio.
- The overall requirement to run this on older laptops is bit too high. If you are running with less than 8 GB ram, it slows down the system quite badly.
- Installation is quite tricky.
November 06, 2018
Virtual Software Solution That really Exists
- Snapshots, being able to create images of your Windows VM daily
- Share folders across machines
- Disk IO, never seems to be a hog
- Size, it seems bloated
- We have had issues with users trying to reclaim disk space. Not sure if it is just us or a known hassle
- Updates seem few and far between
September 11, 2018
Parallels Desktop - The best choice for virtual machines on Mac
- USB device compatibility. This is ESSENTIAL when using some of the USB-connected testing hardware I often have to work with.
- Parallels also makes it seamless to share data between the host OS and the virtual environment.
- I spend most of my time in Parallels running Windows, but at times I do load up a Linux or Android VM for testing. I am able to switch back and forth between them or run multiples with little to no effort.
- I honestly cannot think of anything I would want Parallels to add or do differently. After 10 years of use, since Parallels 4, I have stuck with Parallels because they just do it right from the beginning.