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Parallels has announced the release candidate for the next version of Parallels Desktop for Mac. The final version of Parallels 3.0 is expected to arrive in the next few weeks and will bring support for 3-D graphics as well as two major new features -- SmartSelect and Snapshots.
The graphics support should be welcome news for gamers as Parallels 3 will offer support for both DirectX and OpenGL graphics in the virtual machine. At the moment Vista's Aero interface is still not supported, though the Parallels site says it's in the works.
Of the two major new features the most interesting is SmartSelect which allows users to map files on the Mac desktop so that they automatically open in Windows apps. For instance you can set all your .doc files to open in Microsoft Word 2007 and the virtual machine will launch whenever you double clicking a Word document.
Having to manually launch Windows apps and then open files was the main reason I abandoned Parallels a while back, so I'm look forward to testing the new version when it officially arrives.
The other noteworthy new feature is Snapshots, which offers the ability to save the state of a virtual machine and roll back to the saved state whenever you get a virus, er, need to.
There are an additional 50 or so new features in the new release, as well as about a 100 bug fixes, which you can peruse in the release notes.
If the announcement alone has sold you, Parallels is offering version 3 at the discount upgrade price of $40 until June 6. After that it'll be $50 to upgrade and $80 for a brand new copy. We'll be sure to give the full rundown when the public release arrives.
screenshots from the Parallels site:
[1]: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/upgrade "Parallels 3 release notes"
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