Parallels 4.0 - Good Stuff

If you're a Parallels user at version 3, I think you'll find the Version 4 upgrade well-worth the price. (Note that if you bought Parallels after September 1st, 2008, you get the upgrade for free.)

If you're not familiar with Parallels, it's a program for the Mac (intel-based Macs only; it doesn't run on G5s or G4s) that lets you run Windows on the Mac. And it works very, very well. For most people, it'll be just as good as running a real Windows computer. You still need a Windows XP or Vista installation disk and serial number, of course.

But if you need to run specific PC programs - Office 2007, Quickbooks for Windows, Access, etc - it's a great solution. I use it a lot to get screen shots of PC programs when I'm creating tutorials for Windows applications at work, and of course to work in and troubleshoot the programs I support on the PC-side. It's literally like having an entire second PC computer, but with no need for another box, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. You can easily transfer files back and forth between the real operating system (Mac OSX) and the virtual operating system.

Below is a screen shot of a Windows XP virtual machine running on my Mac:



Keep in mind - when you're running Windows on your Mac, you're running Windows - which means, you'll also want to install the approrpriate security software such as antivirus and antispyware.

The list of new features and existing capabilities is extensive, so check out the site for yourself.

I use both Parallels and Fusion. Fusion is VMWare's similar offering, which competes directly with Parallels. For a lot of subtle reasons, I prefer Parallels. It just seems faster and more mac-like to me. But you can read the reviews yourself and download trials for each, to see which you prefer.

Go with the Screenflow

It's not often that I'll buy something based on an email advertisement. But I was intrigued when the Flip4Mac people sent me one announcing three new products for sale, all resulting from a recent acquisition they made. (Flip4Mac is the company that makes the free plug-in for Macs to let them play Windows Media Files, among other products).

Anyways, their write-up of newly-acquired ScreenFlow really caught my eye, so I downloaded the demo. It's a screencasting program, and it's quite awesome.



A screencast, for the uninitiated, is a recording of your desktop activity, with voiceovers and possibly other graphics. It's like pointing a video camera at your screen while you demonstrate how to do something, but of course the quality is much better. You see the mouse move, hear the mouse clicks, watch windows open and close - all while the narrator explains what's happening. The training movies at Lynda.com are examples of screencasts.

Within half an hour, I recorded a 5 minute screencast by simply plugging-in a microphone, launching Outlook, and hitting "record" in the ScreenFlow program. (yes, I know - Outlook is a Windows program. I was running it on my Mac via VMWare Fusion).

It was very, very easy to use; I only had to refer to the manual once. The timeline area is a cross between iMovie and Final Cut. It's a piece of cake to drop in additional graphics, background music, or even a second video source. Just drag and drop. You can also apply call-outs to specific areas, sort of like shining a flashlight onto a particular part of the screen to highlight a menu option, button, etc.



No wonder it won "Best Mac OS X Leopard Application" at this year's Apple World Wide Developer's Conference. I know I'll be making heavy use of this app at my company, putting together a nice library of training videos for our intranet.