We seem to be mentioning both Parallels and Kerio pretty frequently, and they keep coming up with cool stuff. Kerio announced today that it will be offering its mail and collaboration platform, Kerio Mailserver, as a Virtual Appliance for Parallels on the Mac, news that will be of interest to a lot of folks looking for an even easier way to get away from Exchange.

The Virtual Appliance comes with a preconfigured version of CentOS 5.3 Linux, optimized for Kerio Mailserver. It looks like an ideal solution for businesses that need to run more than one OS, allowing hardware to be shared and making efficient use of server power.

I'm guessing you'd want an XServe or high-end Mac Pro if you're planning to deploy multiple Virtual Appliances, but I would think that the KMS Virtual Appliance should run on any Intel Mac which can do a decent job of running Parallels to begin with. If you missed it, check out the WWDC video of a tricked-out Mac Pro running Leopard and two installs of Vista with Parallels.

The Kerio Mailserver Virtual Appliance comes ready-to-run (if you have Parallels Desktop or Server) as a 30-day trial. Pricing starts at $499US for ten users, with an option to add integrated McAfee Anti-Virus for an extra $100US ($599).

Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels, was gracious enough to sit down with us to talk about his take on the Keynote, WWDC in general and some enhancements which were announced at the Parallels shindig at Jillian's. The acoustics in the room were very echo-y and I picked up a lot of air noise and fire trucks. The rescued soundtrack has some spooky artifacts but is completely audible.

The direct access we talk about is shown in detail in the Jillian's video linked above, and is a very impressive step forward for virtualization. Continue reading for the video.

We'll be posting an interview with Parallels CEO Serguei Beloussov shortly, but here's a peek at what Parallels can do on a Mac Pro. The video shows some impressive 3D rendering happening inside of two separate Vista virtual machines running simultaneously with OS X 10.5. The essence of the pitch is Parallels' ability to directly access hardware, in this case the video card, to improve performance within each virtual machine. Cool stuff.

Sometimes you have to use Windows. Supporting clients in multiple-OS environments makes this a necessity for some Mac users, while others want to run applications that are available in Windows only. You can get a preview of the latest flavor of Windows, Windows 7, by running Release Candidate 1 of the new OS either in a virtual environment such as VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox, or in Apple's own Boot Camp. Christina did a thorough rundown of the options for running Win 7 on Mac back in January.

Of course, you may not own Fusion or Parallels, and perhaps you don't want to have to boot into Windows separately. In that case, you can download a copy of Sun's VirtualBox application (it's free) and then download a copy of Windows 7 RC1 from the Microsoft website (it's free, too!). Follow these detailed instructions or watch the video, and you'll have a free way to test Windows 7 until at least June 1, 2010. Windows 7 will shut down after every two hours of use after March 1, 2010, which is Microsoft's subtle way of telling you to buy the OS or update to a later build.

If you're a VMWare Fusion user, the VMWare team has instructions and a video available here. Want to try out Win7 RC1 with Boot Camp? There are instructions here. For Parallels 4 users, I was unable to find a good set of instructions, so if any TUAW readers can provide me with a link, I'll update this post.

How is Windows 7 RC1 as an operating system? It's faster than Windows Vista on my 3 year old iMac, and some features look surprisingly Mac-like. I'll leave it to you as an exercise to see how much you like or dislike it.

Yesterday, Robert talked about setting up a new Mac Pro for his switcher Dad. Today, setting up Windows proves to be a bit of a headache.

When I mentioned to my best buddy Cameron that Dad was getting a Mac Pro to replace his just-months-old Mac mini, he said "Wow. He sure moves quickly when it comes to toys!"

That he does. Just three or four months ago, he had bought his Mac mini. Now here we were, installing Windows on his tricked-out refurb Mac Pro.

This was proving to be a problem. For me, mostly.

He wanted to install Windows XP Service Pack 2, which, as far as we knew, would work fine. We started Boot Camp Assistant, and printed out the instructions. We had a whole 750GB hard disk to give to Windows, so we chose it and were restarting into that purgatory of Windows Setup in DOSville.

After loading its various components ("Human Interface Parser" was our favorite), Windows Setup displayed the volumes available to install Windows, but our newly-created Boot Camp partition wasn't listed. Uh oh.

Raise your hand if you remember when a Mac was a Mac and a Windows machine was a Windows machine, and never the twain shall meet. I sure do.

Change has come.

Our own Christina Warren has written an exhaustive set of instructions for installing Windows 7 on a Mac over at our sister site, Download Squad. Windows 7 is in beta, so don't try and use it for any mission-critical tasks. Meant to be an incremental update to Vista (Snow Vista?), the current iteration of Windows 7 includes changes like a redesigned taskbar, enhanced touch performance and improvements when run atop multi-core processors.

While Intel Macs can run Windows 7 via Boot Camp, Christina points out that virtualization is probably the best bet for most users. She described how to set up an installation with VMWare Fusion 2.0, Parallels 4.0 and VirtualBox 2.1.2 (and the VMware team has posted a guide of their own for Win7 on Fusion).

If you're a Mac user who keeps Windows around for compatibility testing or that one proprietary Windows app you can't do without, and you're just itching to try Windows 7, this is the tutorial for you. If you're wondering what the fuss is about over on the Microsoft side, Engadget's deep dive on Windows 7 is a good place to start.

Popular virtualization software Parallels has been updated to build 3810. The software offers many upgrades and fixes, including Windows DirectX 9.0 with Shaders Model 2 support, as well as "experimental" support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 beta.

The "experimental" caution, as you might surmise, means not all features will work. For example, in Snow Leopard, there is no USB support, and Parallels notes there is no shared networking support.

Parallels has been running a competitive race against VMware Fusion as each software solution tries to out-feature and outperform the other.

The Parallels update can be downloaded at this link, or you can select "check for updates" from the Parallels application help menu.

A complete list of the enhancements in this build can be found here. Some users are reporting faster performance and some improvements with use of peripherals.

If you've been considering Parallels Desktop for your two computers, they have a great deal for you: buy one for $80 and get one free. The price effectively gets you two copies of Parallels for $40 each. Not bad. Just follow this link here.

Parallels Desktop is virtualization software that allows you to run a variety of PC operating systems from within Mac OS X.

[Via Smoking Apples.]

Virtualization vendor Parallels has just released Parallels Desktop 4.0 for the Mac. Parallels Desktop is designed to let users run Windows (or Linux) on your Intel Mac within OS X.

The newest version of Parallels Desktop boasts better performance (Parallels is claiming a 50% increase over Parallels Desktop 3.0), better graphics, support for more OSs and support for up to 8 GB of RAM and 8 CPUs. Like VMWare Fusion 2.0, Parallels Desktop 4.0 also supports OS X 10.5 Leopard Server as a guest OS, and features experimental support for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Some of the other stand-out features:

• Ability to save screenshots across operating systems
• Remotely manage Windows VMs via the iPhone
• Direct X 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0 support and support for up to 256 MB of video RAM (you can see a list of supported games here)
• Parallels Virtual Appliance support

You can check out the full list of new features here. I'm converting my Parallels virtual machine to 4.0 right now and will post more thoughts on Parallels 4.0 and how it stacks up to other virtualization options from VMWare and VirtualBox in the next few days.

Parallels Desktop 4.0 is $79.99 and available now. Existing Parallels customers can upgrade for $39.99 through the end of November. If you purchased Parallels Desktop AFTER September 1, 2008, your upgrade is free.

When it comes to virtualization on the Mac, it's mostly discussed in the context of running a variant of Microsoft Windows. This makes sense; the ease of getting Windows to run within OS X (on Intel hardware) is one of the key reasons many first-time Mac buyers are migrating to Apple. However, Windows is hardly the only game in town.

Although the annual proclamations of "the year of the Linux desktop" haven't really panned out, thanks to distributions like Ubuntu, more and more individuals are at least giving Linux a try. Today, Canonical made both the server and desktop versions of Ubuntu 8.10 (codenamed 'Intrepid Ibex') available for download.

Even before the Intel switch, PPC users could effectively run Linux distros on their machines, but virtualization coupled with Intel hardware has made running a VM of Ubuntu -- or any Linux distribution -- fairly painless. Using commercial software like VMware Fusion 2.0 or Parallels Desktop, or open source and free solutions like VirtualBox, you can set up an Ubuntu virtual machine much like you would with Windows.

If you have ever installed a Windows virtual machine, using Parallels, Fusion or VirtualBox, the process for installing Ubuntu is almost exactly the same. Download the Ubuntu 8.10 ISO image (a slow process today with the demand for the new release; it should speed up next week, and there are Bittorrent seeds for faster service) and then select that image for the virtual CD drive when creating your VM. The process, depending on your system, should take under 20 minutes from beginning to end.

Today, I set up a virtual machine of Ubuntu 8.10 in both VMware Fusion 2.0 and VirtualBox 2.04. Parallels Desktop works with Ubuntu, but I had problems trying to get Ubuntu 8.04 installed and am still reading reports of problems with 8.10. Parallels might work just fine with Ubuntu 8.10, but keep in mind that it might be kludgy.

Read on for more install options.

Parallels started offering a bundle of applications for sale last night (yes, that Parallels -- the one that makes VM software). The Parallels "Green Computing Bundle" is a collection of 9 applications for $49.99 including:

• Parallels Desktop for Mac
  
• MacScan
• PasswordWallet
  
• Macintosh Explorer
  
• Macaroni
  
• Drive-in
• PageSender
• Default Folder X
• docXConverter
  

The biggest application (and therefore the biggest deal) is by far the inclusion of the Parallels Desktop. You can purchase the bundle by visiting Parallel's Green Computing Bundle website.

Parallels must be feeling a little pressure from the big Fusion release earlier this week -- they're throwing in some music when you pick up their app. By visiting this iTunes page on their website and buying the virtualization software, which lets you run Windows or Linux virtual machines within OS X, you can nab a $25 gift card to iTunes as well.

If you've been interested in trying some virtualization software (they're certainly a plucky group of devs) and haven't yet been enticed to do so, maybe some free iTunes money will do the trick. The offer expires in about a week and a half, so you've got a little time to think it over. $25 in iTunes goes a long way these days -- that's eight HD shows of The Office, or 25 Koi Ponds!

Thanks Phill

Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.0 has arrived! We did a detailed review of VirtualBox 1.6 back in July, and now a shiny new version is available. If you want to set up a virtualization environment on your Intel Mac, but don't want to spend money on Parallels or VMWare Fusion, xVM VirtualBox 2.0 is a free and full-featured package that may fit your needs very well.

What's new in version 2.0? Mac users will see the following changes:

• 64-bit OS guest support (only on 64-bit hosts, as one might expect)
• New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
• New-version notifier
• Guest property information interface
• Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
• Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)
• Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)

A list of bug fixes can be viewed after the break. xVM VirtualBox 2.0 can be downloaded here.

Ben Gray, analyst at Forrester Research, says that Mac OS X accounts for 4.5 percent of the business operating system market, 3¾ times their share in January 2007.

Computerworld notes that all this has happened with one thing notably absent: an enterprise strategy. "I haven't seen anything from Apple that seems to show it's attack[ing] the enterprise market," Gray said.

He says the gains in market share are due to two trends: client virtualization (using software like Parallels or VMWare) and the idea that corporate IT departments are more willing to support a broader range of hardware and software.

"In the end, [IT departments] want their employees to be as productive as humanly possible, so they'll approve tools that people are more comfortable with," said Gray.

In related news, Windows' overall share of the corporate market dipped slightly from 95.6 to 94.9 percent for the same time period.

[Via Macworld.]

Running other operating systems on a Mac is nothing new, and with the advent of Intel-based Macs we've seen a flood of virtual machine software: Parallels Desktop for Mac, VMWare Fusion, and Codeweavers CrossOver Mac. These products enable you to run Mac OS X and another operating system simultaneously.

For many of my consulting clients who are switching from PCs and who already have a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows, I've been using Sun's Open Source xVM VirtualBox product. Why? xVM VirtualBox works very well and it's free.

If you're new to virtual machines and want to know how to do this, follow along as I set up a Windows Vista virtual machine on an "old" 2GHz Intel Core Duo 20" iMac.

This post is continued after the break.