Parallels Lets Your Users Dump Windows with Coherence Mode
October 31, 2019
Parallels Lets Your Users Dump Windows with Coherence Mode
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Parallels Desktop
As my department continues to have designers and developers migrate off of Windows operating systems and onto Macs, we needed a solution for those users to access legacy business applications that work only with Macs. As a result, Parallels was our solution of choice, as it offered simple Windows virtualization on the Mac without a need for centralized VM management (though we have that too).
- 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.
- Parallels has enabled us to move to MacOS for some of our roles, and those users couldn't be happier. Even though they are still using Windows under the covers, Continuity Mode abstracts that away, and users feel like they never have to leave MacOS.
- We often don't need most of the features that Parallels offers, and so, it doesn't always feel like money well spent. Parallels would do well to consider additional price points to help justify its cost versus free alternatives.
- Parallels struggles to justify why users should upgrade alongside the yearly MacOS upgrade. Screenshots and email integration are amongst the headlining features this year. Yawn.
Parallels Desktop ends up filling the sweet spot between free, but basic application (VirtualBox), and fully featured enterprise application (VMware Fusion.). Even at this point, we don't use all of the features of Parallels, but the perceived performance boost over VirtualBox and simplicity versus VMware Fusion makes it the best choice for our organization. Our users don't want to really have to manage their virtual machine—they just want to use it for their legacy Windows applications and be done, so neither a barebones approach nor a swiss army knife of customizations would fit. Parallels hits that sweet spot.
Do you think Parallels Desktop delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Parallels Desktop's feature set?
Yes
Did Parallels Desktop live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Parallels Desktop go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Parallels Desktop again?
Yes