Parallels 13 Upgrade Experience
A Parallels 13 upgrade wasn’t really top of my priority list at the start of last week, but I discovered that it was something I had to do in order to upgrade to OS X Mountain Sierra. As I use my Windows 7 virtual machine on a daily basis, upgrading Parallels became a must before I could try out Apple’s new OS.
Finding the Parallels 13 upgrade and buying it was nice and easy and I was pleased to find some clear online documentation to help me with the preparation.
All I had to do was remove the Parallels Tools and antivirus from my existing virtual machine, shut it down and proceed with the upgrade.
Before I got started, I used MacKeeper to have a good clear out of my temporary and cache files. MacKeeper gets a mixed reception from Mac users, with many traditionalists saying Macs “clean themselves up.” I disagree, and frequently use the program to clear a good chunk of disk space – you can read my review of MacKeeper here or buy MacKeeper by following this link.
Anyway, with my cleanup complete, I went ahead and began preparing my virtual machine for the upgrade. At this point, disaster struck! Due to no fault of Parallels, my Mac hit a “Kernel Panic” and crashed.
When I booted back up, my Windows virtual machine refused to start with a “disk read error” message. I began cursing myself for even considering a Parallels 13 upgrade! Luckily, a restoration of the VM files from a recent Time Machine backup was all it took to restore things to their former glory.
With this all out of the way, the Parallels 13 upgrade was flawless. The new version installed over the top, and my virtual machine was soon up and running under the new version of the program.
In truth, I haven’t yet noticed many significant changes in terms of functionality but performance seems to have improved. One minor change that really helps is that the Parallels menu bar now appears when you hover at the top of the screen in full screen mode – a small thing that saves me time when previously I would have had to switch to windowed mode.
As I said at the start, a Parallels 13 upgrade was never a priority of mine, but the extra performance has been an unexpected bonus and, as before, the virtual machine environment is wonderfully stable. I am still happy to report that Parallels desktop is better than using Bootcamp!