They have taken the iPad finger strokes and made them work when you are taking over a remote computer. You don't have to re-size the application to perfectly fit in the screen. You can takeover just one Mac/Windows Application at a time. * The upside, Parallels Access is pretty sweet. When you connect with Parallels Access, the computer you takeover gets all funky as Parallels us tweaking the desktop resolution so that it can show you one Mac/Windows application at a time. It's being phased out in favor of Parallels Access, which does the same thing, but costs $79.99/yr and doesn't currently work on the iPhone. Parallels Mobile was introduced around version 7 and now it's being phased out. This meant that if I just had my phone, I was still good. * The downside, Parallels Mobile worked for iPhone and iPad. Just have Parallels running and you're good to go. You don't have to setup your router or anything. I grab my phone, open the Parallels Mobile app, and it connects to my laptop at home, shows me the desktop, and lets me do what I need to do. I can sit at the coffee shop and remember I needed to hit send on an email. These are Apps that you run on your iPhone/iPad which allows you to takeover your remote machine. First off, what are these things, you might ask. Win7 was a bit more troublesome.Parallels has replaced Parallels Mobile with Parallels Access as of this version. The only issue that I have had is that sometimes after upgrading from a previous version, you will need to "re-authorize" your copy of Windows. But when coupled with an SSD the performance increases dramatically.
On a conventional HD the performance is rather good.
Mostly for sandboxing and testing, but the XP VM I have to keep running for some legacy software. I currently maintain VM's for WinXP, Win7, Snow Leopard, Mavericks and Linux.
OWC was offering a hefty discount when purchasing Parallels with an SSD so I opted to upgrade after all. But then I had a HD that was failing so I decided to replace it with an SSD.
When Yosemite was released I held off upgrading because I didn't want to pay the full upgrade price. But for the things that I just couldn't afford to replace, Parallels allow me to run them in a Win VM without a hitch. Most of the applications I use are either supplied within OSX or I was able to find cost-effective equivalents.
(~ 5 years) My big concern when switching to the Mac was.would I need to rebuy a lot of the software that I was using. Verified Buyer Reviewer: Anonymous Location: Kankakee, IL Age: 45-54 Experience Level: Power User Owned Product: less than a month Rating: 4/5 Very good solution if you NEED to run Win ApI have been using Parallels almost as long as I have been using a Mac. If you're using OS X Lion or later, you can setup a second copy of OS X to be used as a guest operating system alongside your main system, without having to purchase or download another copy of OS X.