Parallels update = good.

I’ve had Parallels installed on my MacBook Pro for a while and used it to connect to my employer’s VPN for a while (for some reason I could only get a Cisco VPN on a PC to connect) but haven’t used it much since. My buddy Lew also has a MacBook Pro and when I mentioned to him that I wasn’t a huge Parallels fan, he asked if I had loaded in the updates. I hadn’t, and while loading the update could have been easier, the end result is awesome. I wish I had thought of checking a while ago – the update was back in October of ’06. I can now run OSX and have a Windows bar on the bottom of my screen as well as specific windows open that are running Windows, and others running OSX. This eliminates much of the clunk from running a specific Windows window with all Windows windows open within that…window. It also allows me to have PC versions of PowerPoint and Excel open in windows on my Mac desktop that are no different than every other window I have open. Hopefully the sluggishness that came from having Parallels open and running will be gone too, but only time will tell on that one.