As a Mac user and an employee of a company that currently services Windows exclusively, I have become quite familiar with the Parallels application. I am sure there are other users out there as well and we may even run into some as Technicians. It’s important then to know our options in terms of dual booting and running parallel operating systems. You can imagine my delight then to see the first update to Parallels that I am aware of in the last year. In fact, the newest version of Parallels supports Vista SP1, XP SP3.

Parallels, Inc. recently released a new version of its namesake application Parallels Desktop (3.0.5600), which includes support for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. It also fixes some kernel panic issues, unusually high CPU usage, and provides improvements to Shared Folders. For those of you who don’t use Parallels, I can attest to the frustration of the overwhelming CPU usage as I have had to reboot on several occasions just trying to start Parallels. I would get a frozen app and a “not responding” error in the Windows…well, window.The point of Parallels is so that Mac users with Intel processors can run Windows apps alongside Mac apps. It works rather smoothly and has saved me on a number of occasions.

If you should run into this problem with a friend or a family member or even a customer, the update is free for existing Parallels 3 users, and is available as a 88 MB DMG package.