Multi-OS Engineers - here's your one-stop-shop solution
February 01, 2018
Multi-OS Engineers - here's your one-stop-shop solution
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Parallels Desktop
We use Parallels as a catalyst to being able to use Mac computers while still being able to use Windows OS. 90% or more of our product team (developers and QA) use Windows for their development needs with running code locally. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code have systems in place that allow us to run our distinct code locally in a browser to test our specific changes. Parallels allows us to have both OSX and Windows on the same machine and without having to own two computers. Parallels also allows OS specific files to be shared between the two operating systems.
- Being able to use two OSs at the same time allows me to use OS-specific applications at the same time on the same machine.
- Parallels works like a browser window or any other "program" window on your native machine, you can minimize parallels like any other program which means you're essentially able to minimize and hide an entire computer screen.
- File sharing. Being able to access, say, a Microsoft Office document on windows and then can save it and open it on my native Mac system means that it's immensely more efficient than having to use to computers.
- You can use virtual desktops as your OS rather than having to share hard drive space between two OSs and having to partition the processor locally to run both OSs at the same time.
- Adjusting settings in Parallels is difficult and confusing. There are a few different menus that only open depending on whether Parallels is running or not.
- Setting up an "are you sure you want to close" modal when closing out of the program via the mac side. It can get confusing switching between Mac and PC windows and clicking the correct "exit" button since Mac and PC are on opposite sides.
- Parallels uses a ton of local processor data. Making Parallels more CPU friendly for users that aren't running i7 processors would greatly improve their attraction to non-commercial developer users.
- We'd spend a ton more money on duplicate machines for product team members without Parallels.
- Parallels allows us to only have to use Windows OS when we absolutely need to, which allows us to spend more time using Mac OSX and less time dealing with the annoyances of Windows.
- Being able to run virtual machines from a program on our native machine makes development extremely more efficient.