Damn The Torpedos, Parallels Keeps Cranking Out The Betas

Last week, VMWare announced its Mac virtualization software, Fusion, will be out of out of beta on August 6, and now, not to be outdone, the original Mac virtualization solution — Parallels has released a new public beta update.

Unlike the last couple of betas from Parallels this one if free and open to anyone with a Parallels 3.0 license or a trial license, which can be obtained by e-mailing the company.

The new beta features improved integration for Coherence Mode, including support for Expose, which means your Windows apps will zoom and stack just like your Mac windows. Other new features include (taken from the Parallels blog):

• The Image Tool is back at full strength and completely compatible with snapshotted drives. Using the image tool, users can:
• Convert virtual hard drive format (plain to expanding, expanding to plain),
• Enable/disable the “undo disk” option, which will erase all changes made during a session at shutdown. It's ideal for those of you doing a lot of testing or working in school settings),
• Easily enlarge a virtual hard drive if you're running out of space.
• Explorer, the free utility that lets you browse and work with your VM???s hard drive even with the VM is off, now also works with VMs that are suspended.
• iPhone support in XP and Vista. Yes, I realize the irony of syncing an Apple device with Windows running on a Mac, but lots of people need to hook their iPhones up to Outlook. Try not to judge.

I haven't tested the new features yet, but I'll be taking a look over the weekend. If you'd like to give it try, grab a copy from the Parallels site, but keep in mind that this is a beta offering, don't try to use it on mission critical machines.