Parallels releases Desktop 8 upgrade, slates full release for September 4th

You can’t knock a solid version release.

Per The Mac Observer, Parallels has announced the release of Desktop 8 for Mac, its virtualization software that allows OS X users to run a wide variety of other operating systems, notably Windows. The many enhancements in Desktop 8, including Windows 8 support, are aimed at making the integration between these two OSes even more seamless with the new version offering the following fixes and changes:

– A new button is made available in Safari, “Open in Internet Explorer.” When a website doesn’t render well or at all in Safari, just click the IE button and IE launches on the Mac desktop.

– In OS X, drag a file on the desktop to the Outlook icon and send it, in Windows Outlook, as an attachment.

– Dictation Support. For Windows apps that accept voice dictation, Mountain Lion’s voice dictation can be passed along to them.

– The Parallels Virtual Machine list now shows CPU and RAM utilization of each running OS.

– If a Windows app supports full screen, it will run full screen in OS X. A new Presentation Wizard makes presentations easier and interruption-free by disabling screensavers on Mac and Windows, optimizing the full-screen display and automatically adjusting resolution. In the “smart full screen,” the OS X dock is suppressed, and presentations can appear as if they are natively running on a PC.

– Notifications from Windows. Windows app notifications are passed along to Mountain Lion’s Notification center.

– Mountain Lion gestures like pinch, rotate and zoom are passed along to Windows 8. Copy and paste, drag and drop are supported for Windows 8.

– USB 3 support for the virtual machines in Desktop 8.

– Retina display support – Mac Retina display resolution is supported for Windows 7 and Windows applications to see crisper fonts, vivid photos, images and animations.

– One can download the Windows 8 Release Preview right from the Parallels Install Wizard.

– One can put Windows apps in the OS X Launchpad and run them from there.

– Bluetooth Support: Windows and Mac devices can now share Bluetooth connections.

– Improved speed. Parallels claims that Desktop 8 performance is up to 30 percent faster for input/output operations, 30 percent faster for games and up to 25 percent faster for virtual machine operations such as boot, suspend, shutdown and resume, when compared to Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac.

– Desktop 8 for Mac supports a wide range of guest OSes, including Windows, Linux and Solaris. Also supported as guests are Snow Leopard Server, Lion, and Mountain Lion. (Snow Leopard client is not licensed by Apple for virtualization.)

Parallels Desktop 8 requires a Mac with at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Mac OS X 10.5.8, 4 GB of RAM and 15 GB of disk space for each virtual machine to install and run. The Parallels Desktop 8 upgrade for Mac is available beginning Aug. 30, 2012 for current customers and is priced at US$49.99 as a download only.

The full version will be available to new customers on www.parallels.com/desktop starting September 4 and will retail for US$79.99.

Special pricing of US$49.99 for the full version is available to customers currently using VMware Fusion.

Customers who purchased Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac from an authorized reseller on or after July 25, 2012, are eligible to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac at no additional cost.