Working in an all Mac environment has its perks, not having my finger on the virtualization market isn’t one of them. I rarely have to use Windows, and when I do, I just pull out an ancient Compaq Presario that collects dust on my shelf.
We’re not naive enough to expect that no one uses virtualization tools, and as a matter of fact, some of you probably use it daily. So, if it’s important to you, it’s important to us. Here’s some of the latest news from both Parallels and VMware.
Parallels 6
The Parallels team has announced that they’ll be releasing Desktop 6 for Mac on September 14th, 2010. Included in the major update is an all-new 64-bit engine, as well as the ability to immerse yourself in games, music and videos with 5.1 surround support.
Out of all their prerelease news, the most intriguing is the 40% speed boost claim. If there was ever one thing that stopped me from virtualizing Windows, it was speed concerns.
The update, along with it’s 80+ new features, will be sold for $49.99.
But, before you run out and drop your money on Parallels, you might want to check out what their competition is working on.
VMware for the iPad
With one company announcing a new desktop application, another major player in the market, VMware, is announcing a new iPad application.
VMware quietly showed off features of its still in-development iPad client during a keynote address at VMworld. It’s pretty interesting, and says a lot about the power behind the iPad, considering operating system virtualization isn’t exactly light on resources. It’s being reported that the application will actually work similar to a VNC application, showing the desktop screen on an iPad, but running the virtualized environment on an off-device server, similar to the Citrix Receiver for iPad. Only time will tell if it’s a glorified VNC viewer, or if there’s an added benefit of using VMware on the iPad.
It’s also interesting to see what the VMware people think of the iPad:
The iPad is “one of the key devices we have to support,” says Raj Mallempati, director of desktop product marketing for VMware. “We want to get this as early as possible.”
It looks like our virtualization choices keep getting a little bit more difficult. What do you use for your virtualization needs? Why would you recommend yours over the competition? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Article via Just Another iPhone Blog and MacNN
