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Apple Businesses Entertainment Games

Parallels 3.0 Announced, 3D Graphics Included 242

Posted by Zonk from the did-you-know-you-can-play-games-on-your-computer dept.
99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "For some time Mac users have been waiting to see who would bring 3D graphics to a Windows emulation/virtualization solution under OS X. It looks like Parallels is going to be the winner. They have announced an RC of Parallels 3.0, with the final to be available 'in a few weeks.' For anyone else tired of Bootcamp or rebooting to play a Windows game, it look like the solution is finally here; I'm not counting out VMWare entirely. Obviously it will depend on how soon they can catch up, but there is some serious first-mover advantage here for Parallels."
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Parallels 3.0 Announced, 3D Graphics Included More

Parallels 3.0 Announced, 3D Graphics Included

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  • VMware Fusion 2? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mrseigen ( 518390 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:07PM (#19357713) Homepage Journal
    The second release of VMWare Fusion had D3D8 acceleration under XP and it was released a few months ago. It's not like Parallels is first to this party.

    • VMware Fusion *Beta* 2 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kaseijin ( 766041 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:30PM (#19358035)

      The second release of VMWare Fusion
      Fusion is still in beta with no public time frame for release.
    • VMWare has ZERO grasp of the Mac market. Their application is a mess and scatters files all over the drive. I used the free beta of VMWare for like, 2 days before I decided to buy Parallels.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ditoa ( 952847 )
        Because it "scatters files" you write it off and buy another product? Its a beta, it is trivial to tidy up the files an application uses when you consider how complex a virtualization application is. Seems a bit gung ho to me. Not saying Parallels isn't a great application as well, its just you are much to quick to disregard an application for a superficial reason in a beta product.
  • Reading about all this virtualisation and emulation stuff reminds me of the shapeshifter days on the amiga.
    Emulating a mac went from a slow and laborious process to something almost realtime.

    The price of this seems a bit harsh though, it pretty much doubles the retail cost of Windows, are Mac users that desperate for this functionality that its worth it?

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:15PM (#19357829)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • are Mac users that desperate for this functionality that its worth it?

      Most of them aren't. They'll either find a way to get Parallels+Windows for free, or they'll live without. That's not to say there won't be enough Mac users (which is to say, "enough to make a profit), but most Mac users probably won't bother.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by virgil_disgr4ce ( 909068 )

      are Mac users that desperate for this functionality that its worth it?

      To add my two cents here, I doubt many people are "desperate." But given that my MacBookPro is, far and away, the best laptop I've ever owned or used (and in many ways the best piece of any hardware I've ever owned), it's a relatively small price to pay for a great platform that does pretty much anything I can think of needing or wanting to do--and importantly--does it in a well-designed, well-thought-out, organized way that reduces the amount of effort on my part.

      That being said, $80 still irks me!

      • are Mac users that desperate for this functionality that its worth it?

        To add my two cents here, I doubt many people are "desperate."

        I think the OP meant "disparate." :)

        --Rob

      • When I'll buy my MBP (holding out for Leopard) it's going to be the most powerful machine I own. If I can get near-native-performance Windows gaming on it for eighty bucks all I have to say is: I'll buy that for a dollar. Eighty, even.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      Emulating a mac went from a slow and laborious process to something almost realtime.

      Almost realtime? My 68060 Amiga ran MacOS faster than any 68k Mac ever made. Who needs a Quadra when I have an Amiga 3000 with CyberStorm?

      Of course, I was salivating over the 604e-based Macs at the time. But we'll ignore that ignominious fact, while I brag about how much faster my obsolete computer was than someone else's obsolete computer. ;-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xero314 ( 722674 )

      The price of this seems a bit harsh though, it pretty much doubles the retail cost of Windows, are Mac users that desperate for this functionality that its worth it?

      I don't think you have your math quite right. Parallels cost $79.99 retail while Vista cost up to $399.99, and at least $199.99. This is not doubling the cost. On the other hand, XP is free for most people since there are so many unused XP licenses sitting around, or even better win 2k (which is what I run in one of my parallels installs). You also have to spread the cost of parallels between each of it's installs, since a number of users, such as my self, also have a couple flavors of linux running in

    • Where can you get a copy of WIndows for $80.00? Or if you Upgrade right now $40.00 I know you linux guys don't pay for anything. But $80.00 is a fair price for being able to run at the same time Mac Applications aside of Windows Applications.

      For people who need to run Windows apps this is cheaper then getting another computer. Much less of a hassle then using boot camp and booting back and forth. $80.00 is not much for the value of Parallels and with Windows Licenses costing over $160 a license is is

    • "The price of this seems a bit harsh though"
      You've never used Parallels have you?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pvera ( 250260 )
      Because the best windows PC I have ever used is this Mac Book Pro. OSX is just the icing on the cake.

      My license of Parallels was $79, and I had a retail license of XP, no need to purchase a full license of XP. When 3.0 comes out, I qualify for a competitive upgrade, so it will be $50 ($40 if I order before launch date).

      When I get a blue screen of death in XP, all I lose is VS.net, VSS, SQL Server management studio and whatever browser windows I had open. Everything else in the machine is OSX and running fin

  • uh boot camp still wins (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp. If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get. I bought a mac, but I'm 98% in the windows. I only use mac to test web based apps in safari. For people like me or for gamers, I don't see why you would ever use paralells emulation. The speed cost is just too high.

    • Re:uh boot camp still wins (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geniusj ( 140174 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:18PM (#19357863) Homepage
      If they are able to get performance within 10 or 15% of native, I'd be impressed and happy. Sometimes you just want to play a casual game and don't plan on playing for an extended period which makes rebooting a pain. Since Parallels allows you to boot off of your bootcamp partition in a VM, it'll be nice to be able to do both.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smclean ( 521851 )
      The answer is some people don't like running Windows. You didn't know that?

    • Re:uh boot camp still wins (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:35PM (#19358083)
      If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get.

      Not really. If I can get 30 FPS in the games I want to play, I'll be happy. A few extra FPS that are ultimately irrelevant aren't worth a reboot, especially into Windows.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by wal9001 ( 1041058 )
        I'm not sure why this is modded down, because it's certainly true. You may not be able to run state of the art games too well, but if all you're trying to do is run a FPS from a few years ago and can do so under Parallels then I see no reason not to.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
          Or if you're trying to run anything but a FPS. Or if you're not aspiring to be a world class FPS player.

          Apparently there are some actual reasons why you might want your FPS to run at more than 30 fps, but they're not something that a casual gamer needs to care about.
          • 30 FPS under normal load mean 1 FPS during the first explosion, and horribly torn frames during fast movement. I for one will not put up with that. All you need is a $100 7600GT and you can play all kind of games very well. Why put up with horrible performance?
            • 1.) You don't have $100.
              2.) $100 aren't worth it to you because you're fine with slight stuttering and/or low quality settings.
              3.) You own a laptop.


              Besides, even an 8800GTS can achieve single-digit framerates with modern games. Playing on 1400x1050 with all settings maxed, HDR on, 4x FSAA and 8X anisotropic filtering might stress out the card on some occasions.

              And yes, I know someone who defines "being able to play a game well" as "being able to achieve 30+ fps under all conditions while running at t

    • Re:uh boot camp still wins (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:39PM (#19358115) Homepage Journal
      why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp. If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get. I bought a mac, but I'm 98% in the windows. I only use mac to test web based apps in safari. For people like me or for gamers, I don't see why you would ever use paralells emulation. The speed cost is just too high.

      For you, Boot Camp makes sense. Me, I'm in the opposite situation -- I do almost all my work in OS X, but write apps which occasionally have to be tested with Windows. So Parallels is the perfect solution. I'm not really concerned about squeezing every ounce of speed out of Windows because I don't spend much time in it; I just want to drop into it every few days to make sure that what I'm doing works, preferably without having to reboot my machine.
      • I run XP in Parallels all day long some of that work is fairly processor intensive. Sure it's not as fast as native but it's close enough I've wasted more time reading this thread than I will all week waiting on Parallels. For that matter it's close enough most people would never notice. And I didn't have to buy a second machine.

        Hell, even if the penalty was something like a quarter as fast I'd still use it. That's way better than quitting what I'm doing and rebooting. Now that I think of it, even if it wer

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Balthisar ( 649688 )
          I used Virtual PC for ages and ages. It was dog slow ("emulation"), but it let me run the few Windows apps that I absolutely need. In most cases, it was quicker and easier to VNC into my bona fide Windows box.

          When the Intel Macs came out, and then Parallels, I dumped the PC and replaced it with an iMac, saved my dollars and dumped my workhorse QuickSilver for a bigger iMac. Parallels was *that* damn fast. I've never tried BootCamp and don't intend to (dual boot? please), so I honestly don't know what the pe

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tsa ( 15680 )
        I'm in the same position. I only use Windows to play (adventure) games. Last weekend I decided to buy myself a 24" iMac once the new ones are out. That already was a pretty good deal, but with the new Parallels it suddenly is a lot more attractive. You get a screen that costs around 1000,- and around it you have a computer with WiFi, bluetooth, a reasonably good videocard, nice harddrive, good sound and beautiful exterior for 1200,-! The harddrive is big enough to put OSX, Linux and Windows on it, and with

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by LKM ( 227954 )
        I have a similar case. I develop server-side Java apps that need to run on IE. So I have IntelliJ on my Mac, and lots of different Parallels images with IE6, IE7, Vista+IE7 and various other differences. At least one instance of Windows runs all day long next to my Mac.

        Of course, if you intend to play games, BootCamp is still the better solution :-)

    • Re:uh boot camp still wins (Score:5, Insightful)

      by frdmfghtr ( 603968 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:42PM (#19358163)

      why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp. If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get. I bought a mac, but I'm 98% in the windows. I only use mac to test web based apps in safari. For people like me or for gamers, I don't see why you would ever use paralells emulation. The speed cost is just too high.
      Because there are times where I want to work in Windows *and* Mac simultaneously. I can run a Win2K guest OS with my campus Novell client and have access to all the networked apps that I need to use, and still use my Mac apps.

      As you said, for people like you or gamers, Boot Camp is the way to go. "You and gamers" are not the majority of computer users, thus that is why "the rest of us" who need it will use Parallels.

      • Because there are times where I want to work in Windows *and* Mac simultaneously. I can run a Win2K guest OS with my campus Novell client and have access to all the networked apps that I need to use, and still use my Mac apps.

        I agree, 100%. I got Parallels on my Intel Macbook because my work has various web-based applications which refuse to run under Safari or Firefox, as well as Windows-only applications. Also, I hate to say it, but Microsoft Office runs much smoother and quicker and less *quirkier* und

    • Because Win98 won't run natively on a Mac, and even if I could install it I wouldn't be able to do the system updates since the update server is down. However, I happen to have this virtual machine image that is fully updated. Maybe now I'll be able to play System Shock 2 on my Mac.

    • Re:uh boot camp still wins (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:58PM (#19358345)

      why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp.

      First, it is virtualization, not emulation. I run Parallels because I need to use both Windows and OS X native applications to get my daily work. Rebooting 30 or 40 times a day would be less than productive. Also, maybe you're not understanding the workflow of many mac users. I don't shutdown my computer and I don't reboot. I rarely ever shutdown about 5 major applications. I am a casual gamer. I used to go to LAN parties with my laptop and play Warcraft 3 and amaze all the Windows users by not bothering to shut down Photoshop, InDesign, Firefox, and all the rest of my applications, because OS X's multitasking was up to it. I'm sure not going to shut down all my applications and close all my files and reboot my machine, just to play some game. That would be a huge pain in the ass. I will, however, boot up a Windows session in a window and play it there.

      Most gamers are casual gamers, like me. We don't care if it is running 50fps instead of 40fps. We don't care if the textures are all at the highest settings. We just want to play a few games and have fun without a hassle. If Parallels will let me do that, I'd shell out for it. I can afford it. I'm a computer geek; we tend to be well paid. I say I would pay for it because, likely, my company will be buying my upgrade for me anyway.

      I bought a mac, but I'm 98% in the windows. I only use mac to test web based apps in safari.

      The advantages of using OS X as the host OS are numerous, if you're the kind of person willing to learn new ways of doing things. It is an added level of security, and running OS X apps natively allows for more interaction between apps and more customization of features for all apps.

      For people like me or for gamers, I don't see why you would ever use paralells emulation. The speed cost is just too high.

      For games that don't use 3D acceleration, I don't even normally notice any speed difference at all between parallels and bootcamp. The limiting factor in all cases is memory, so running Parallels is like having .5G less memory. With the notice graphics card support, I doubt the speed difference will bug me at all. Like I said, I (like most gamers) am a casual gamer. In any case, claiming the speed cost is too high is a bit premature until it is actually tested, don't you think?

    • It's the only way to run Minesweeper and Mac OS X at the same time. :P

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bl8n8r ( 649187 )
      rtfa? "OpenGL and DirectX games and apps in a virtual machine on your Mac, without shutting down OS X!".

      The difference is you don't use software rendering. This can be a boon for cad that isn't as demanding as gaming, but still needs hardware gl to perform well. Apparently Quake 4 is running "full speed" whatever that means, so maybe removing the software rendering layer takes a large chunk of overhead away.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mrbooze ( 49713 )
      Not all games require all the speed you can get. Not even all new games. And if someone wants to play some old favorite windows game the performance on a modern machine should be more than adequate even when virtualized.

    • Re:uh boot camp still wins (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @05:45PM (#19358837) Homepage Journal

      At work I sometimes use Parallels to test web pages with MSIE. Type up some seemingly totally standards-compliant CSS or javascript in SubEthaEdit [wikipedia.org], save, mouse over to the memory-sucking Parallels window, click reload, stare in amazement at the unanticipated behavior, curse and snarl, pull out some hair, email the boss to ask if things really are required to work with MSIE 6, pull out some more hair, etc... all w/out rebooting.

      About the only bad thing I can say about Parallels, is that it isn't curing baldness.

    • Re:uh boot camp still wins (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 ) <sherwin@@@amiran...us> on Friday June 01, 2007 @06:02PM (#19358991) Homepage Journal
      1. You don't know what the speed cost is. It could be minimal, or it could be significant. You have no evidence either way; if it manages to pass most instructions through to the host OS it could be very fast. Wine, for example, is quite fast, but there's a good deal more overhead in Parallels.

      2. You're not the target market for this app. You only use OS X for Safari. Most Mac users aren't like you; we primarily use OS X, and are "forced" to use Windows occassionally for one app or game. This covers most switchers too; how do I know? We just switched our company, and everyone has the choice of OS X or XP. Guess what? OS X has won out on every user, and no one uses boot camp. Just Parallels.

      3. Most people are willing to exchange some speed for security. Staying in OS X means you know that your computer will always work; no worrying about viruses and the like.

      • 3. Most people are willing to exchange some speed for security.

        I guess that explains the 200 meter lines at Heathrow [youtube.com] :(

        --Rob

      • Wine, for example, is quite fast, but there's a good deal more overhead in Parallels.

        WINE is also a completely different beast. It isn't a virtual machine at all, but a natively compiled reimplementation of the Windows libraries. When you run an application under WINE, you're running it natively.

        Hell, it stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator.

        • And?

          When you run a program under Intel's VT-x paravirtulization, you aren't emulating it, you are running it natively.

          It's true that you have the overhead of two operating systems, but neither operating system requires much of the "oomph" of a dual core system with a gig of ram. Both can be near idle; and that's why you get excellent performance with modern implementations.

          The question is whether or not they can pass through most of the 3D stuff. If they've implemented a virtual driver in the virtual machin

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trifish ( 826353 )
        Staying in OS X means you know that your computer will always work; no worrying about viruses and the like.

        Sheesh, I thought for a moment that I was watching another of those Mac vs PC Guy commercials. Just read what you wrote...
      • > 3. Most people are willing to exchange some speed for security. Staying in OS X means you know that your computer will always work; no worrying about viruses and the like.

        And like most exchanges of speed for security it is utter bullshit.

        Yes osx is still safe, however windows wheather native under bootcampo of virtualised under parallels is still as suseptable to virus's either way.
    • Why would I want to run in emulation, you ask?

      Because I am already loathe to load any software that includes copy protection crapware on my computer. If I could, I would load and run my games in separate virtual machines. That way, I wouldn't worry about rogue ring 0 device drivers and who know what else affecting my system.

      Of course that same copy protection junk will probably choke when run in a virtual environment. C'est la guerre!

      BTW, is it still paranoia if they are really trying to get me?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shmlco ( 594907 )
      Parallels doesn't require you to repartition your drive, "wasting space" on a 30GB partition that may or may not ever get filled up. Plus I can clone VM's for testing (web developer), back them up, archive them, run Windows IE6 at the same time as I'm developing to test for compatibility, and so on.

      Sorry, but it's BootCamp that's at a disadvantage here, not Parallels.
    • why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp?

      s/Windows/WinXP. Bootcamp is supported for XP only. I have and prefer W2K.

    • Disclaimer: Anecdotal Evidence

      When I talked to one of the sales reps at the Mac Store in Des Moines, IA, he said he got better performance for his games using Parallels as compared to Boot Camp. Now, I don't know why this happened, but I am assuming some sort of driver issue. However, it doesn't really matter as what truly matters in this situation is overall performance - making Parallels the better choice.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 )
      Why did you blow all that money on Apple software and hardware when you could just install Konqueror for almost the same purpose?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ratbag ( 65209 )
      Why run virtualisation?

      1. So I don't have to reboot.
      2. So I can have a copy of Windows/Linux/Solaris/Netware suspended in the background, ready to start up as and when I need to use it, whilst still having full access to my documents/emails etc. It takes 5 seconds on my MBP to spin up a suspended copy of Netware or Windows 2003. Compare speed cost with booting your machine. Whilst it's suspended it takes no resources other than disk space - same as Boot Camp.
      3. To run more than one OS simultaneously (eg mul

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      why in the world would anyone run emulation when they can run Windows natively with bootcamp. If you're going to play games you would obviously want the most speed you can get.

      Actually, if 10% less frames-per-second means I don't have to go through the whole nightmare of rebooting into windos, I'll do it without at second thought.

      There are lots of advantages: I can keep all the stuff running in the background (mail, downloads, etc.). I don't have to reboot (time!) plus all the hassle (windos needs to re-sync with tbe Mighty Mouse after every reboot, for example).
      Having it in a VM also means I can make a copy of that and if XP corrupts itself again for no reason at all, I have a

  • What about DX performance? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Wicko ( 977078 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:22PM (#19357923)
    I see Quake 4 supposedly running at full steam (no specs or framerates though, but I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt), but how are DX games running on that? Since Q4 is using an OGL engine, I can see why it would be able to perform so well. But it is my understanding that DX games greatly outnumber OGL ones.

    Great work otherwise.

  • Linux Guest Tools too (Score:5, Informative)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:23PM (#19357943) Homepage
    I currently run Windows under Parallels, but Linux under VMware Fusion due to the lack of Linux guest tools. The Parallels 3.0 announcement said Linux guest tools were provided, and that was a major reason why I've put down the cash for the pre-order.

    Cheers,
    Ian
    • There's also guest tools for Solaris, OS/2 Warp 4 and eComstation as well as several others. Don't believe the hype on 3D for Parallels, though. I have it on authority that it only supports open GL 3D and the Direct X accelleration does not support Vista.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 )
        I have it on authority that you are an idiot, because they posted HalfLife 2 Support on the parallels blog, and HalfLife 2 uses Direct 3D

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Macka ( 9388 )

      If that's the case then I'll likely consider an upgrade too. 3D and the other Windows fluff I don't need; I don't have to go into Windows that often; but decent Linux Guest Tools have been sadly lacking for some time. I'd pretty much decided to switch to VMWare when it came out of Beta because of that. Parallels 3.0 might just keep me instead, if they've done a half decent job of supporting the main Linux distros (including Ubuntu).

  • While I'm sure the gamer crowd represents a vast share of Parallel's customer base, I am still disappointed that they seem to entirely neglect their technical customers. New releases often, if not always, come without changelogs. There is no quick way to send a machine image to someone else. There are still no Parallels Tools that synchronise mouse movement etc. for operating systems other than Windows.

    VMWare people, bring it on, release every zig! This is a market where we need some competition.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by robbieduncan ( 87240 )
      Erm, did you read the announcement? Parallels Tools for Linux are in 3.0...

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by VGPowerlord ( 621254 )
        Yup, the announcement in the blog says nothing about Linux Tools, only the comments mention them. It's the upgrade page that actually mentions the Linux Tools.

        More importantly, what do these tools do? If I were to seriously consider running OSX with Linux under it in Parallels, I'd like to know what exactly this gives me.

        Of course, Linux isn't the only other x86 operating system out there. The BSD family is, for instance. I know people who swear by the OpenBSD firewall tool, for instance. However, I ca
    • Only for games? GUIs are increasingly making routine use of graphics acceleration.

  • Is it worth it? (Score:3, Informative)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday June 01, 2007 @04:36PM (#19358097) Journal
    I bought Parallels when I got my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, even the latest version causes regular kernel panics. The machine is rock solid without the Parallels kernel modules loaded and grey screens a couple of times a week with them. I've seen it on Core 1 machines running fine, but on Core 2 laptops it's definitely still in the 'avoid like the plague' category.
    • It runs OK on my 2x2.0 Mac Pro, sounds like a MacBook Pro thing :-( I presume you've reported it to Parallels?

      Damien
    • I had constant kernel panics with Parallels on my Macbook until I upgraded to 2GB of RAM... now it's solid as a rock and I haven't had any issues in the 4 months since.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rufo ( 126104 ) *
      I use Parallels on my MBP 2.16Ghz C1D and I haven't had one kernel panic from using it, and I've been using the beta builds since about September of last year. I'm giving it about 800MB out of 2GB, running VS2005, an ASP.NET development server and Excel (don't even ask why), often leaving it open for weeks at a time. If that's not heavy usage, not sure what is. :-) I'd start looking into your hardware - might want to grab REMber and give your RAM a test.

      (Thank god this project is almost over... I want nothi
  • What version of DirectX?

    VMWare Fusion does 8.0,which annoyingly doesn't work with alot of what I want to use it for... Does parallels do one better? All I need is 9 =-)
  • I'm looking forward to playing Quake 2 with faster software rendering under Parallels. However, OpenGL support would be nice.
  • As a Mac user who ONLY uses Windows for the few games I enjoy which don't have a Mac equivalent, I have yet to find the rebooting aspect of BootCamp to be slow in the least. Shutting down OSX has always been a quick-fast-and-in-a-hurry process, with the whole machine completely down in about 15 seconds, tops. Windows, it seems, performs better than I have ever seen it on my iMac and boots up completely in just under a minute or so. In fact, rebooting into Windows on my iMac takes FAR less time than it do
  • I'm kind of disturbed that they're asking us to pay for the upgrade, since they haven't had a version that's got even beta-quality USB support for more than a few months: I still have to disable and re-enable USB every time I sync my Palm, but at least it's possible now. I feel like I've been paying for being in their beta program, and shouldn't have to pay again for their "real" version.

    Even if they're calling it 3.0.

    I've been debating switching to VMWare already, because they've had good USB support from

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