The Blog of Brad
Posts tagged parallels
New Xserve Announced Yesterday
Apr 8th
Until yesterday when Apple announced a new Xserve I had both forgot Apple made the Xserve and that they’re still being produced.
But, these new Xserves do have amazing specs:
- 1 or 2 2.26GHz+ Nahalem processors (the newest generation, also in the Mac Pro)
- 8 MB L3 cache per processor
- tri-channel memory controller (on-die)
- Hyper-threading te4chnology (that means up-to 16 virtual cores!!!!!!)
- ‘Turbo Boost’ technology which dynamically powers off other cores when not in use to boost clock speeds of other cores
- Full 64-bit support
- SSE4 SIMD
- Support for more effecient/faster virtualization technologies
- Up-to 32GB of 1066MHz DDR3 ECC memory *as of Mac OS X Server 10.5, hardware is capable of more
- Up-to 3 TB of hot-pluggable storage
- Build-to-order with 128GB solid state drives as an option
- 2 PCI-e 2.0 ports
- 2 independent Gigabit networking ports
- 2 750 watt power supplies (for redundancy)
- Depending on model-Up to Quad-channel fiber channel 4GB connection(s)
- …and of course, this is rack-mountable
with:
wow…
Starting at $3499 CAD
Parallels EXTREME!!!
Apr 2nd
I just visited Parallels.com and found their new virtualization product, Parallels Workstation Extreme (love the name?)… it seems that this product uses different technologies to allow users to utilize virtual machines to do high-end graphics work such as video and image and auto-cad work… and even cooler, gaming!
It says that this product uses their —-and that it uses
Intel VT-d to dedicate the graphics card(s) and networking hardware to the VM. (I would be interested in hearing how hard this actually is for a developer, way back in the summer of 2006 Steve Gibson of GRC and Spin Rite and of the Security Now podcast had made the comment about how Intel TV technology makes it easier to use a hyper-visor technology and that it would be difficult to patch physical hardware into a VM). This seems like a big step for virtualization, and I’m glad to see it happen so soon: I just hope that it comes to Mac OS X (soon!)
They have a diagram explaining how a physical resource is dedicated to a VM (embedded below), but they don’t point out that the original advertised benefit to virtualization was to consolidate and emulate network cards, etc… but now they’re asking for dedication (??)… Just putting that out there that this is ‘EXTREME’ over kill for (I would say) 80% of Parallels users, but for those who need it, you can sign-up to get more information if you desire here. (I did).
No Chrome for Mac (still!)
Nov 6th
It’s been just over 2 months since the release of Google’s Chrome web-browser (released September 2) (links about Chrome: Google’s Chrome page: Wikipedia.org Chrome page: my posts about chrome). Since then there has been a way for mac and linux users to sign up for more information because Googles claimed it’s “still in development”. And all I can say is that Chrome is the best browser I’ve ever used since, Safari back in 2002. So, if you’re a mac user like me, there are some options to get your fill of Chrome:
- Wait for the native mac version
- Use Parallels or VMWare Fusion to use Windows virtually on your mac
- Reboot everytime you want to go online into Windows and use Chrome
- Use CrossOver Chromium
(Codeweavers) CrossOver is a company made famous for it’s “no Windows required” product that allows mac and linux users to run Windows applications on their computerss by duplicating the Win32 API. This can be bought for just $49! That’s over $100 savings from Parallels or VMWare (with those two you need to buy a copy of Windows)! CrossOver packages their product in editions for different uses–like one for running Office–or the CrossOver Chromium product which only runs Chromium (Chromium is the open-source name for Google Chrome)–or the full version which will run most common Windows apps. The biggest issue is speed. It’s job is a lot like that of Apple’s Rosetta technology to translate PowerPC instructions to Intel, CrossOver translates Win32 API to Cocoa and DirectX to OpenGL, so don’t expect to be able to play a game or edit movies with this, but it’s more than fast enough for Office.
You can download CrossOver Chromium here, it’s free! I can only assume that this product is free to advertise what they’re able to do. This solution has been out for a while and I’ve resisted writing about it because it’s not near perfect.
For a point of reference, Safari open on Intel iMac with just one bounce (< 1 second) and CrossOver Chromium does one bounce then has a spinning circle showing that it’s loading… this takes just over 5 seconds. But once it’s running it handles page loading pretty well… but I just can’t get over the weird cursor issue–when you move your cursor on top of CrossOver Chromium your cursor changes to a white Windows cursor… and some Windows keyboard shortcuts work (the mac ones do to!)
So, for now it’ll have to do it for you, and Google should have the native Mac version out soon, I hope…
A Youtube video demonstrating CrossOver Chromium: here.
CodeWeaver’s CrossOver Chromium FAQ
Sun xVM VirtualBox – by Macworld
Aug 30th
This is an episode of the Macworld (magazine) video podcast. This podcast cover’s Sun’s new addition to the Mac virtualization game-competing with VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac. The best part is that VirtualBox is free! Here is Macworld’s Video review.
