Also, for anyone taking part of the Parallels conversion to Fusion – if you’re running the Desktop 4.0 product, you’ll need to use VMware’s converter product to transfer your virtual machine.  Fusion 2.0 cannot import the new format that Desktop 4.0 introduced.

Update: Norton Antivirus is working fine after reboot… So, no problems in moving between Parallels Desktop 4.0 and VMware Fusion 2.0…

So, given that I had such a hard time, I’ve decided I’ll buy – heck, $10 ain’t much – and give Fusion a real try, running it in production.  So, I guess I should revise my virtualization history to say – I’m now VMware at home and work!

Virtual PC was a nice first step into the virtual world.  It came along at time when I was working for a University and was not in the sys admin world that I find myself today.  I found Virtual PC so sluggish and slow that I never was able to really use it.  So it collected dust on my hard drive for a year or longer before we purchased our first Intel Mac.

Around the same time as the Intel iMac purchase, Parallels released a beta of their Desktop product.  I quickly installed and used this version at home.  If memory serves, they did not have the Transporter product at that time and so I was forced to do an install of Windows XP.  The quick install for Windows was a great thing.

Fast forward to version 2 release for Desktop and I believe Parallels had added the Transporter feature – maybe that was version 3 – but anyways, that gave me the ability to utilize my actual Virtual PC image.  After a successful test, I reinstalled Virtual PC and loaded a fresh XP image.  Then I shutdown and saved the VHD file out on my NAS for the future…  That future was this week.

After importing my VHD file into Parallels Desktop, the automated upgrade process was very smooth.  It took some time, but everything completely successfully.   The image is very fast and starting with a clean image isn’t necessary a bad thing with Win-doze.  Unfortunately, I lost the few Windows applications that I depend on – Symantec Antivirus, Microsoft Money and the Savings Bond Wizard from the Treasury.

Both Symantec Antivirus and Microsoft Money are electronic delivery products.  And while I love the convenience of purchase and instantly download, reinstalls are a major pain.  In the 4 or so times I’ve reinstalled Microsoft Money, its always been a major pain to redownload and install the software.  So, I’m currently running a 60 day trial license and plan to pickup a box copy at Sam’s Club this weekend or next.

Norton Antivirus was far more of a let down.  Their new Norton Account “feature” and license restrictions is a big problem.  Granted, I was within a month of my current subscription expiring, but I found that I was unable to unlock and move my copy of Norton Antivirus to the new VM.   To that end, I purchased a new copy of the Antivirus at a much higher price point than my yearly upgrade.   I do like their subscription model, but the inflexibility of being able to move my copy as I move machines is a major pain.  Fortunately, I hope never to have to re-do my image again…

I think Symantec could do a much better job of allowing an unlock at least once a year or at least letting you move your subscription to a different PC.  Because of the activation process, they can lock down the Liveupdate process for virus definitions and updates.  So even if you leave the old copy running, you wouldn’t receive updates…  Anyways, just a pain, in my opinion.

But today, things are settling out.  I just upgraded to a brand new MacBook Pro and I have moved my Parallels Desktop 4 from the iMac to the new MacBook Pro and it is working fantastic.  I will say that the iMac seemed more sluggish running a Parallels Desktop 4.0 virtual machine configured with 512MB of RAM than the prior version did.  Maybe it was just my impression, but I didn’t think it was as fast.

The new version does add a lot of functionality, but it seems to be at the expense of performance – at least footprint – for the software.   Running the virtual machine does seem to be faster, though I’d beg to differ with the 50% increase in speed.  I will say that Parallels has always impressed me with how well it runs Windows XP.  Windows runs better on a Mac and in Parallels Desktop than on any piece of physical hardware I’ve ever run it on… so I’m just saying.

Word of advice – though I don’t know if this has an impact… Remove your snapshots before you upgrade or convert your VM to version 4.0… I think it would make the upgrade much easier…

Today I purchased my upgrade to version 4.0 of Parallels Desktop and I’m still in process of installing and upgrading my virtual machine.  I won’t say the install is painful – its very elegent and Mac like, but it has taken a couple hours now and I’m not finished yet…  The install was fast enough and I do immediately like the interface changes that I see presented before me.  I think Parallels has done a good job of making this new version very Mac-like.

The conversion process from the version 3.0 to 4.0 virtual machine has been a little painful – only in the sense of anticipation in running the VM.  This release is touted as 50% faster than the prior version and I’ve often bragged that Parallels runs Windows XP better than any Windows only machine I’ve ever encountered.  So to say this version is 50% faster, I’ve simply gotta see to believe.

Given that this conversion process is time consuming (my VM is approximately 25G), Parallels has smartly given me a “Take this time to learn about our newest features” overview of their changes.  One, I immediately noticed was the ability to virtualize Mac OS X on Mac OS X.  This is going to be a fun one to play with… now I just have to get into the Snow Leopard BETA program…

Other new features include Modality (a new view – not really sure what it actually is), improved Coherence, Safe Mode (a read-only mode for VMs – something VMware has had for a long time in their products), an iPhone interface to start and stop and otherwise control VMs (neat, but what’s it really worth?), and improved graphics support.  Coherence was one of the biggest new features I loved about this product.  VMware Fusion followed suit with their Unity feature and I think the ability to run Windows windows beside Mac apps seamlessly is great.  As far as improvements, the system tray from Windows has been integrated into the Mac OS X menu bar, which is good.  I think this will allow users to hide the nasty start bar when in Coherence.

I try and keep tabs on both products, but I have to confess – I’m a VMware user at work, Parallels at home.