Every now and then we come across a PC game that looks like fun or issues with a Firefox theme on the PC and I have no way of testing them really well. Yes, we have a PC, however, I haven’t fixed it yet. It’s in need of a power supply and I’m a bit un-motivated to fix it. Playing around with Paralles latest version this weekend, the new feature Coherence is amazing.

Coherence makes Windows apps appear as a normal application on your Mac desktop. It removes the window constraints and desktop of XP and everything becomes independent.

How cool am I?  Gone retro and posting in IE 6 on my iMac.  No, not with Parallels or any Windows OS installed at all.  It’s CrossOver and I’m checking out the latest release.

If it works well, I may consider buying it.  But then again I do own Parallels.  The advantage to CrossOver is you don’t need Windows.  The downside is that not all software is supported and it’s got a very retro/ugly feel to it.  Course that could be due to IE 6.  I’ll have to check out more programs. 

Have you used CrossOver?  Thoughts?

I’ve taken Parallels for a test spin and I’m very impressed. VirtualPC was the best emulator around years ago and it still never worked very good. Now, with Parallels, you can run Windows (3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, Me, 2000, NT, XP, 2003), any Linux distribution, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2, eComStation, or MS-DOS while running OS X.

I installed and ran Windows 98 as it’s the only thing I had lying around. The install process was pretty simple and took forever. The long install is thanks to Microsoft though, not an issue with Parallels. Once installed, the speed that Windows 98 ran was extremely impressive! No delays when you try to open a folder. No ‘this blows’ attitude like I had with VirtualPC. It was smooth, fast and ran quite good.