Stories about: Parallels

VMware's CEO made his pitch on Tuesday for a new type of operating system for the data center, and in the process assigned the "traditional OS" to the dustbin of history.

VMware Inc. Tuesday released a public beta for Fusion 2.0, virtualization software that lets Intel-based Macs run Windows, Linux and other operating systems. Fusion 2.0 also adds support for multiple monitors and makes it easier to switch from rivals' virtual machine programs, said the company.

Since the dawn of time -- or, at least, the dawn of personal computers -- the holy wars over desktop operating systems have raged, with each faction proclaiming the unrivaled superiority of its chosen OS and the vile loathsomeness of all others.

This week I was going to continue with my discussion of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0 but, as is so often the case, I got distracted by another problem.

The "Save XP" petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, not end most sales on June 30 as currently planned, has prompted many readers to suggest that maybe the best answer for those who don't like Vista is to switch to another operating system completely.

Sun announced Tuesday that it is buying Innotek, maker of VirtualBox, virtualization software that may have more value for software developers than data-center administrators.

Server virtualization feels unstoppable these days. The worldwide market for virtualization platform software grew 69% last year to US$1.1 billion, according to market research firm IDC, which predicts average annual growth of 27% through 2011, when global sales are expected to total US$3.5 billion.

A rash of hypervisor virtualization announcements recently from Microsoft, Oracle and Sun signal the game is on to beat down leader VMware and jump in the corporate virtualization revolution.

Now that Apple has blessed its users with a release date for the next version of Mac OS X -- it's the 26th, in case you didn't hear -- the next order of business for anyone planning to upgrade is to step back, take a breath, put down the credit card and think things through a little.

Consider the similarity between Angelina Jolie and the One Laptop Per Child project. Both garner gobs of favorable publicity for their humanitarian work that overshadow, in Jolie's case, her recent dry spell at the box office, and in the OLPC's case, its lack of a proven business model.

Paul Venezia bamboozled me into buying a MacBook Pro back in January, and I've been on it semi-daily ever since. And yeah, overall, I've been pretty happy. Of course, the only reason I was willing to buy one at all was because Parallels made it so easy to run Windows. But while my initial usage ratio was 85 percent Parallels, 15 percent OS X, over the last six months, that's changed dramatically to 45 percent Parallels, 55 percent OS X. Yup, the Orchard does slowly assimilate you.