Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Parallels 11 brings Macs and PCs together like never before

Once upon a time you were either a Mac or a PC kind of person. Those adverts with Jason Long and the PC guy told us so. For the past few years however, running a dual boot system or, indeed, “parallel” systems has become far easier, especially through the use of Parallels software. Now Parallels 11 has been released, adding Windows 10 support to the side-by-side OS system.

There are three versions of the new piece of Mac software: Parallels Desktop 11, a Mac Pro Edition, and a Mac for Business Edition. These not only let you run Windows 10 alongside your OS X install, but bring with them a number of features from Micrsoft’s new flagship operating system — features such as Cortana, the digital assistant who can give you directions or restaurant advice.

Parallels 11 also boots 50 percent faster than previous iterations of the system, and file operations are 20 percent quicker too, according to CNET.

Related: Want to use OS X and Windows 10 simultaneously on your Mac? Here’s how

The Pro Edition may draw the interest of regular users as well, though it was built with developers in mind. It supports software like Docker, Visual Studio, as well as other developer tools. The Business Edition, meanwhile, is designed for use in situations where there is likely to be an administrator and a range of users. That version also comes with extended support for those who need it.

Pricing starts at $50 for those who already own a copy of Parallels 9 or 10, while for those who don’t, there’s an $80 charge for the standard Parallels Desktop 11. Enterprises looking to take on the Mac Pro Edition or Business Edition can expect to pay out $100 for the year, with a recurring charge coming into play for continued usage after that period expires.

Do you make use of multiple operating systems at once? Or do you tend to stick to your favorite?

Pick up a FREE trial: Parallels 11

Editors' Recommendations

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
Windows 11 to borrow one of the Mac’s biggest conveniences
Windows 11 set up on a computer.

The Windows 11 taskbar already shares a lot in common with the Mac dock, but a new development shows that Microsoft may be taking inspiration from another beloved feature: Force Quit.

The ability to Force Quit directly from the dock can come in handy when things freeze up, and according to the latest Windows 11 build in the Dev Channel (Build 23430), you'll be able right click on an application in your Taskbar and click End Task to kill it immediately.

Read more
Dell’s first Windows 11 ARM laptop is priced like a Chromebook
A woman using a Dell Inspiron 14 laptop.

Dell just launched a new Inspiron 14 laptop with a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, and it's priced like a Chromebook, costing only $500. The advantage of using a Qualcomm chip is the long battery life, and Dell claims the Inspiron 14 can last for 16 hours on a single charge.

The budget laptop includes a respectable 8GB of memory and 256GB of SSD storage, which should be sufficient for productivity and browsing. A 14-inch antiglare screen has an LED backlight and offers 1080p resolution.

Read more
Windows 11 could be hurting your gaming performance
Overwatch 2 running on the LG OLED 27 gaming monitor.

If you’ve been wondering why your beefy graphics card hasn’t been performing as well as it should in Windows 11 or Windows 10, the answer could be Microsoft’s Virtualization Based Security (VBS). According to testing done by Tom’s Hardware, VBS could cause gaming performance to drop by as much as 10%.

In a suite of fresh benchmarks, Tom’s Hardware tested 15 different games, from Cyberpunk 2077 to Red Dead Redemption 2, both with VBS enabled and with the feature turned off. In some games, the results could be cause for concern.

Read more