First Glance: New Parallels Windows-On-Mac Software Is Surprisingly ConfusingFirst Glance: New Parallels Windows-On-Mac Software Is Surprisingly Confusing

I gave the new version of Parallels a short workout today. The software, which runs Windows on Intel Macs, is a powerful upgrade to the previous version. But it was also disappointingly confusing to figure out.

I was able to install it and try a couple of its new capabilities. But I was unable to figure out how to use several new features. And now I have to put it aside for a week as I work on other things. I'll resume my evaluation, and we'll run a full-scale review later this month. But for now, some first impressions.

Parallels Desktop for Mac, from Parallels, Inc., is software designed to run Windows on a virtual machine on top of Intel Macs. Your computer is running two operating systems simultaneously. The first version ran the Windows desktop either in a window on your Mac desktop, or replacing the Mac desktop. You can still run the software that way, and, indeed, many users prefer to do so.

Version 2 added a new feature, Coherence, which allowed you to run any Windows applications in its own, separate window on the Mac desktop. It was an amazing product.

Parallels 3, which shipped Thursday, adds several significant features that further integrate Windows and the Mac OS.

SmartSelect allows any Windows application to open any file type, regardless of whether that file is on the Mac or Windows desktop. For example, a user might open a Windows .doc file with Microsoft Word for the Mac. And vice-versa.

I was able to easily get that working, and it's pretty remarkable. I was, however, unable to figure out, in the short time I had to work with Parallels, how to set the default file type in Windows so that the documents would come up in Mac applications, and vice-versa. I have no reason to believe I won't be able to figure out in short order.

Likewise, Parallels, Inc., says you can set URLs to open in browsers either in Windows or the Mac. So, for example, you can set Parallels so a link in a Windows e-mail opens in the Mac Safari browser. I was unable to figure out how to make that work.

The most popular anticipated feature in Parallels 3 is improved support for hardware-accelerated 3-D graphics, including OpenGL and DirectX, to run Windows-only 3-D games such as Quake, Half-Life 2, and World of Warcraft. I tried running Second Life on Parallels 3; I couldn't do it.

Parallels hasn't done anything about keyboard-shortcut and other user-interface incompatibilities between Windows and the Mac. After four months as a Mac-head, I've gotten accustomed to the Mac way of doing things. When I want to call up app menus in Windows on the Mac, I search for them at the top of the screen, where they'd be on the Mac OS. When I want to close an app window, I type Cmd-W and nothing happens. Somehow, these problems are not so bad when I'm using either of my Windows notebooks -- I think perhaps the fact that I'm not on Mac hardware leads my fingers to at least partially expect a different user interface.

I expect, over time, Parallels will do more and more to make Windows apps work like Mac apps, and perhaps vice-versa. I also expect that'll take years to accomplish.

The other major problem: I was unable to print documents from Windows using my Hewlett-Packard 6310 All-in-One printer. I open a document in WordPad on Windows, click "Print," and get the usual, completely useless Windows printing error message. When I opened the exact same document in NeoOffice on the Mac (using the SmartSelect feature) it printed easily.

One important plus for Parallels 3: It's much faster to come up that the previous version. Click the Windows XP icon on your desktop, and Windows comes right up. The previous version took a few seconds to get started.

Is this a negative review of Parallels? No, absolutely not. They've done a firstrate job with their previous versions, and I'm confident, once I figure out how to configure the new capabilities, they'll run easily, quickly, and without requiring any thought. Sometimes software just takes time to configure and figure out -- doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. Still, I'm a little disappointed -- I was able to do everything with Parallels 2 as soon as I installed it, without any learning curve.

We'll take a more in-depth look at Parallels 3 later this month.