If you only want to use, say, the Windows version of Excel on your Mac, then you use the Single App mode, which Parallels calls Coherence Mode. If you sometimes need to work as if you were using a real Windows system, you use the Windows Desktop mode-and you can drag files between the OS X desktop and the Windows desktop. Either you use the virtualization app to open a complete Windows desktop on your Mac, or you use it to open a single Windows app in an OS X window, as if the Windows app were actually an OS X app. Use Cases Users typically run Parallels (or competitor Fusion) in one of two modes.

Some of the new features give you more interactivity between operating systems. There's also a Business edition, which is subscription-based and adds centralized management features, built-in access to cloud services like Dropbox or Box, and 24/7 support-you have to contact the company for pricing quote, however.īut what makes Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac special, is the way it incorporates Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 features. The Pro version also includes high-level features that I didn't test, including the ability to access a guest OS via or from a browser (if the guest OS is set up as a Web server) and integration with Microsoft Visual Studio and virtualization tools like. 99 per year, adds free upgrades to any future new version and a subscription to the Parallels Access remote-desktop service (normally $20 per year). The Standard edition (tested here) costs $79.99 for a license that lasts forever, but it doesn't include upgrades to any future versions. Versions and Pricing Parallels Desktop comes in three versions. Combined with impressive speed improvements, Parallels remains the top choice for less technical users, though both Parallels and Fusion have their own advantages. Parallels offers the deepest integration between Windows apps and OS X systems, and the latest version, Parallels Desktop 12, offers major advances in the depth of its integration with Windows 10. Parallels Desktop and are the leading virtualization software for OS X, and both let you run Windows apps on the OS X desktop almost as if they were running on a Windows machine. This is the problem like Parallels Desktop are designed to solve. Even if there's an OS X version of your favorite program, it may work differently than it does on Windows-as the OS X versions of Microsoft Word and Excel apps work differently than their Windows counterparts. If you've switched from Windows to a Mac, there's a good chance you want to run some of your old Windows apps, but there's no exact match for them in the Apple-centric world.

How much is parallels desktop