Parallels is upgrading its Mac app today with three new Toolbox Packs that include various collections of features for specific needs. Each Toolbox Pack is available for Parallels on both macOS and Windows, and Toolbox Packs can be bought individually or as a bundle so customers have more choice.

Parallels for Mac is best known as one of the easiest ways to run Windows apps on your Mac without needing to boot into a separate mode from macOS. Each new Toolbox Pack builds on that experience with specific features for different use cases.

Parallels Desktop 8 For Mac License Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac License. Parallels Desktop for Mac is the most tested, trusted and talked-about solution for running Windows applications on your Mac. With Parallels Desktop for Mac, you can seamlessly run both Windows and Mac OS X applications side-by-side without rebooting. Parallels Desktop review is an emulation program made especially for Mac users. It is considered the best competitor to Vmware Fusion Pro and Vmware Workstation; that have very similar features to allow users to run different operating systems designed for windows to work on your Mac computer.

The three new Toolbox Packs for Parallels on Mac and Windows include Parallels Toolbox Presentation Pack, Parallels Toolbox Screen and Video Pack, and Parallels Toolbox Disk and System Pack.

Presentation Pack is created for the more than 30 million PowerPoint presentations delivered each day and includes Presentation Mode, Launch, and Do Not Sleep.

• Presentation Mode – Avoid embarrassing disruptions. One click hides desktop files, blocks email and message notifications, prevents sleep mode, and automatically detects and adjusts resolution for external displays. It will even remember your desired settings for each external monitor and projector, and automatically make proper adjustments every time you reconnect
• Launch – Simultaneously open multiple applications, files, folders and links with one click. Stop searching for all the assets you need every time you work on a project. One click opens all your selected elements at once. You can even change the order in which they are launched by dragging them up or down the list.
• Do Not Sleep – Prevent disruptions and inconvenient logouts: Disables all system settings that cause the computer to sleep, and prevents screensaver activation as well, with just one click.

Presentation Pack for Mac’s full feature set includes: Airplane Mode, Alarm, Date Countdown, Do Not Disturb, Do Not Sleep, Eject Volumes, Hide Desktop, Lock Screen, Launch, Presentation Mode, Record Audio, Stopwatch, Switch Resolution, and Timer.

Screen and Video Pack is created for anyone who needs to capture screen activity and manipulate video with features like Record Screen, Convert Video, Download Video, and Create GIF.

• Record Screen – Easily record video of your entire screen with your desired resolution and audio source. Record an area, screen or window with just a click, with options to specify a 1–5 second delay before recording begins, highlight mouse clicks, specify the file, pre-select audio source (same as system, display audio, built-in microphone or mute), choose resolution, and select destination such as desktop or folder.
• Convert Video – Drag almost any video to the tool on your PC or Mac, such as your favorite movie or TV show, to convert it to MP4 so it can be played on tablets and phones.
• Download Video – In just one click, download videos from your favorite Internet websites to watch offline anytime. Select your desired resolution (1080p, 720p or 360p) and location where you want your video saved for convenient access.
• Create GIF – Quickly and easily create a GIF with any video source. Use the convenient start/end selection mechanism, use zoom control for precise frame selection, add text captions (move, resize and color), select size and framerate, and use a “reverse” GIF option.

Screen and Video Pack for Mac’s full feature set includes: Capture Area, Capture Screen, Capture Window, Convert Video, Download Audio, Download Video, Make GIF, Record Area, Record Screen, Record Window, Resize Images, Screenshot Page, Take Photo, and Take Video.

System and Disk Pack is aimed at anyone wanting to optimize performance in a pinch with Clean Drive and Free Memory features.

• Clean Drive – Reclaim disk space before you run out. Quickly scan and detect duplicate files for easy review and removal, discover the largest files, remove temporary OS and application files, and free up potentially gigabytes of space with just a click. This tool monitors your drive and periodically reminds you to run it to remove useless junk in the filesystem (old logs, caches, mobile device backups, and more,) for better PC or Mac performance.
• Free Memory – Reclaim RAM memory and optimize its consumption on your Mac. Add this Free Memory tool to the menu bar to easily check how much RAM is available with just a click and reclaim available memory.

System and Disk Pack for Mac’s full feature set includes: Airplane Mode, Archive, Clean Drive, Disable Camera, Download Video, Eject Volumes, Find Duplicates, Free Memory, Lock Screen, Mute Microphone, Switch Resolution, and Unarchive.

Each Toolbox Pack is available for both Mac and Windows from $9.99/year per platform. Feature sets may vary between Mac and Windows, but Parallels says each Toolbox Pack will be updated with new features every three months. Parallels customers can also save and subscribe to all three Toolbox Packs for $19.99/year.

Learn more about Toolbox Packs for Parallels and find 7-day free trials for each Toolbox Pack at parallels.com/toolbox. Also stay tuned to 9to5Mac this week for a chance to win one of ten 1-year licenses to all three Toolbox Packs for Mac.

Despite the Mac's recent gains in market share, Windows is still the dominant operating system, especially in businesses. That means there may be times when you need to run the Microsoft OS: perhaps there’s an application your company uses that’s only available for Windows, or you’re a web developer and you need to test your sites in a true native Windows web browser. Or maybe you want to play computer games that aren’t available for OS X. Whatever your reason for running Windows, there are a number of ways your Mac can do it for you.

If you need to run just one or two specific Windows apps, you may be able to do so using CrossOver (), which can run such applications without requiring you to actually install Windows. (CrossOver's vendor, CodeWeavers, maintains a list of compatible apps.)

If you need a more flexible, full-fledged Windows installation, you still have several other options. You could use Apple’s own Boot Camp, which lets you install Windows on a separate partition of your hard drive. Or you could install one of three third-party virtualization programs: Parallels Desktop 7 (), VMware Fusion (), or VirtualBox (), each of which lets you run Windows (or another operating system) as if it were just another OS X application.

Of those four options, Boot Camp offers the best performance; your Mac is wholly given over to running Windows. But you have to reboot your system to use Boot Camp, so you can’t use it at the same time as OS X; it's Mac or Windows, but not both. And while VirtualBox is free, setting it up is complicated—downright geeky, at times—and it lacks some bells and whistles you might want. Which leaves Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion as your best alternatives.

So, of those two, how do you decide which one is right for you? In the past, I tried to answer that question by comparing virtualization programs head-to-head, to see how they did on specific tasks. This time, however, that task-based approach didn’t work, largely because (with a couple exceptions that are noted below) the latest versions of Fusion and Parallels Desktop are nearly indistinguishable in performance. So instead of picking one program over the other based on how well it performs a given task, the choice now hinges on some more subjective factors. So this time around, I’ll look at those and try to explain how the two programs differ on each.

How Much Is Parallels For The Mac

Note that, for the most part, I've focused primarily on using these programs to run Windows on your Mac. You can, of course, use them to run other operating systems—including OS X Lion itself—but that’s not the focus here.

General Performance

As noted, both Parallels Desktop and Fusion perform well when it comes to running Windows 7 on a Mac. Macworld Labs ran both programs through PCWorld’s WorldBench 6 benchmark suite, and the results were close: overall, VMware Fusion beat out Parallels Desktop by a very slight margin (113 to 118, meaning Fusion was 18 percent faster than a theoretical baseline system, Parallels Desktop 13 percent). Parallels Desktop was faster than Fusion in some individual tests, Fusion was faster in others, and in the rest the differences were almost too close to call.

Parallels Desktop 7 vs. VMware Fusion 4

WorldBench 6 uses automated test scripts and eight different applications to simulate the real-world use of a system; we run the full suite multiple times then average the results together. For WorldBench scores, higher is better. All other results are in seconds; lower is better. Best result in bold. Tests run on a 2011 17-inch 2.2GHz Quad Core i7 MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM running OS X Lion 10.7.1; both Virtual Machines were configured to use a 200GB drive, 1724MB RAM, and 4 processors

Mac Parallels Vs Vmware

Distill these numbers to their essence, and what you have are two fast, capable ways of running Windows on your Mac.

Advantage: Neither (or both).

Specific types of performance

While the two programs are practically indistinguishable in general usage, there are three specific scenarios in which greater differences emerge.

The first of them: gaming. If you want to run Windows in a virtual machine to play games that you can’t play on a Mac, then you’ll want to use Parallels Desktop 7. In my testing, it handily outperformed Fusion, especially on newer titles. One reason is that Parallels supports up to 1GB of video ram (VRAM), versus only 256MB in Fusion. Parallels Desktop also has better DirectX support; one game I tried looked fine in Parallels using DirectX, but awful in Fusion; switching to OpenGL in Fusion solved that problem, but not all games offer this option.

Overall, Parallels Desktop’s 3D engine seems to work much better for games in Windows than does Fusion’s engine. So if Windows gaming is your thing, Parallels is the one you want to use.

Advantage: Parallels Desktop.

Linux with Accelerated Graphics

The second big difference between the two: Only Parallels includes accelerated 3D graphics in Linux virtual machines, so if you need that, you’ll need to use Parallels.

Advantage: Parallels Desktop.

Virtualization Explorer

The third big difference: If you want to explore operating systems other than Windows, Fusion offers a much broader universe of alternatives. Both programs support “virtual appliances”—dowloadable, pre-configured operating systems, often bundled with specific applications. VMware’s appliance library is huge, with over 1,900 appliances available; Parallels Desktop’ library, on the other hand, contains only 98. (Desktop can use VMware’s appliances, but they must first be converted to the Parallels format; it doesn’t really seem fair to give the program full credit for that capabiity, if it’s reliant on the VMware ecosystem.) So you want to explore the wild world of operating systems and applications, Fusion is the way to go.

Advantage: Fusion.

So much for the three categories with relatively clear winners; now for the more subjective criteria.

Purchase and license

Fusion and Parallels Desktop both normally cost $80, but pricing for both is a moving target. For example, VMware is currently offering Fusion at a promotional price of $50. Meanwhile, Parallels will sell Desktop 7 as an upgrade to owners of older versions for $50; if you’re currently using Fusion, Parallels will sell you Desktop 7 for $30. No matter how much you pay for a virtualization program, remember that you’ll also need to factor in the price of Windows itself.

There’s a big hidden cost in those prices: the software license. Fusion’s license (for non-business users) allows you to install and use it on any Macs that you own or control. Parallels Desktop, on the other hand, requires one license per machine, and it uses activation to check those serial numbers. So if you want to run your virtualization program on more than one Mac, Fusion will cost less—potentially much less.

Advantage: Fusion (for the moment).

Installation and general operation

Installing Fusion 4 is surprisingly simple: You just drag and drop the program to any directory you wish. There’s no installer to run, and you can store the program anywhere. When you first launch Fusion, it asks for your administrative password and activates its extensions. But those extensions aren’t hidden away in some low-level system folder where you’ll never find them. Instead, they remain within the Fusion application bundle and automatically activate on subsequent launches.

More importantly, they’re deactivated when you quit Fusion. In fact, when you quit Fusion, unless you choose to leave the Windows applications menu item in your Mac’s menu bar, absolutely nothing Fusion-related is left running. This setup also makes uninstalling a snap—just drag the app to the trash, and you’re done. Taking a program as complex as Fusion, and making it as easy to install and uninstall as any simple utility, is a major accomplishment.

Parallels, by contrast, is installed via an installer, its extensions are installed in the System folder and are always present, even when Desktop isn’t running. In addition, two background processes continue to run after you quit Parallels. These processes don’t take much RAM or CPU power, but they’re there.

Advantage: Fusion.

Preferences and virtual machine settings

Both of these programs have lots of settings options; Parallels Desktop has more of them and, consequently, has a more complicated preferences screen. Both of their preferences panels are reasonably well organized, doing a decent job of categorizing the various settings. One thing I don’t like about Parallels is that it automatically enrolls you in the company’s Customer Experience Program, which collects anonymous usage data; you have to opt out by disabling it in the Advanced section of Preferences. Fusion offers a similar program, but you have to opt in, not out.

When it comes to changing the settings for a virtual machine, the two programs take a slightly different approach: Parallels Desktop uses a floating window that’s independent of the virtual machine being configured; that makes it easy to toggle between the settings and the virtual machine, but it’s also easy to lose track of the settings window if you click another window to the foreground.

Fusion, by contrast, dims the virtual machine, and presents a fixed window in the center of the screen, on top of the virtual machine. Its settings window mimics that of System Preferences, while Parallels uses a tabs-and-lists layout. Some users may prefer one over the other, but I find they both work reasonably well.

Advantage: Neither (or both).

Windowed windows

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Both programs can be run in an “integration” mode, meaning Windows applications aren't bound inside a single Windows window; rather, they appear side-by-side in the OS X graphical user interface with Mac programs. (VMware calls this mode Unity; Parallels calls it Coherence.)

In this mode, both programs seem to treat these windows as though they're regular Mac apps. But there is a subtle but telling difference: Parallels Desktop actually treats the windows of your Windows apps as one, even though they display separately. You can see this if you activate Mission Control in OS X Lion: Regardless of how many Windows applications you’re running, they’ll all be lumped together in one Parallels Desktop entry. This means, among other things, that if you use a window-management utility, it may not work correctly.

Fusion, on the other hand, treats each Windows app like a window from any OS X application: The system treats them as truly separate from one another. If you open Mission Control while you’re using Fusion, each running Windows app gets its own entry.

If you prefer to think of your virtual machine as a single entity, you’ll probably prefer Parallels Desktop’ Coherence mode. But if you’re going to the trouble of using an integrated mode, chances are you want your Windows apps to behave just like your Mac ones. And in that case it makes more sense to treat the windows the way Fusion does.

Advantage: Fusion.

Updates

Programs of this complexity require frequent updates; there’s just so much going on that there’s always going to be another feature to add or another bug to fix. The two companies handle updates differently, however. Parallels Desktop pushes out updates rapidly, so users get the latest features and fixes as quickly as possible. Fusion has a slower update cycle. Both programs have in-app updating now, so that portion of the routine has gotten simpler than it was in the past.

So which update methodology is better, frequent small updates or occasional larger updates? That's really up to you; some people like knowing that they’ve always got the latest bug fixes and features, while others may prefer longer periods between updates. The important thing, though, is that both companies do actively keep their products up to date.

Advantage: Neither (or both).

And the winner is…

Parallels Desktop 13 For Mac

So which virtualization solution should you purchase? In my comparison, Fusion comes out ahead (four wins, two losses, and three ties). But you may prioritize these features differently than I do. That’s why I suggest you download each program’s free trial version and see how each handles your particular needs. Both are excellent performers in the Windows arena, so you won’t be disappointed by either program’s speed. Instead, your selection will come down to your feelings about those other, less measurable factors—and for that, nothing beats hands-on experience.

Parallels For Mac Free Student

Senior Contributor Rob Griffiths is master of ceremonies at Many Tricks Software.

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[Updated 02/14/12 to clarify the number of apps that can be run under CrossOver.]