Well, Parallels has released their virtulization software, Parallels Desktop for Mac after a lenghtly public beta. (June 15th, 2006 announcement)
I was one of many who did the early purchase option for this software and the current featureset is wonderful.
For that wish to test Microsoft’s Vista public betas – well, you need to wait a little while as ACPI support is not available yet.
For most everything else, though, Parallels Desktop for Mac is a wonderful virtualization product for those of us who need to bounce into other operating systems for different things.
I use it for testing Windows applications and doing debugging of issues with SBS, Exchange, and the like. I also use it for accessing my someday production VMware ESX ( and soon VI3) systems while I continue to move towards heavy virtualization for my $ayjob.
So far, everything I have wanted to do within Parallels has worked (well, excepting testing out Vista – but that will come). I have done test installs of different Linux distributions, multiple installs of Windows for different environment testing of applications, and for just general fun.
Performance is quite good (Windows XP boots in under 10 seconds), though using Apples Boot Camp is the bomb if you wish to run first person shooter games as Parallels doesn’t have the performance (or drivers!) to make the video keep up with high frame rate games like CounterStrike and the like.
Overall, if you have an Intel based Macintosh and you have a need to do other things from time to time (ie: it isn’t your primary want to use another OS on your machine of choice), then Parallels Desktop for Mac is something you should purchase. It is worth it.