While I'm still thinking about that "unofficial" VMware Fusion 3D video circulating around the Internet, Parallels decided to up their ante with yet another release candidate version of their Desktop for Mac product.

Release Candidate 3 (Build 3170) doesn't offer new virtual 3D graphics, but it does add a few new interesting updates to their desktop virtualization platform:

• You can now seamlessly upgrade a Windows XP virtual machine to Windows Vista.
  
• The drag-and-drop feature has been made more secure. In RC3, when you drag-and-drop a file for the first time, you will be prompted if you would like to enable "local" or "global" file sharing. Parallels describes the difference like so: Global sharing shares the entire Mac file system and is disabled by default. Local sharing on the other hand only shares your Home Folder.
  
• Transporter RC3 is now bundled and it allows you to migrate your real Windows PC, or existing VMware or Virtual PC virtual machines into Parallels virtual machines.
  
• USB 2.0 support is added so that all of your devices like external hard drives, printers, scanners and web cameras are supported. They have also included iSight support at full native speed.

You can find out more about the RC3 release or download it, here.

Posted by David Marshall on February 19, 2007 04:15 PM