About Parallels Workstation

Parallels™ Workstation is powerful Virtual Machine software that can run multiple operating systems and their applications simultaneously on a single computer. Parallels Workstation is implemented on the basis of the Virtual Machine technology and allows you to run different operating systems in separate Virtual Machines on a standard desktop. For example, several Linux Virtual Machines can operate on the computer running Windows 2003 Server.

Parallels Workstation virtualizes a full set of the standard PC hardware including:

CPU Pentium II or AMD Duron;
Generic motherboard compatible with Intel i815 chipset;
RAM up to 1500 Mb;
VGA and SVGA with VESA 3.0 support;
1.44 Mb floppy drive (mapped to a physical drive or to an image file);
Up to four IDE devices, that may be either virtual hard drives (from 20 Mb up to 128 Gb each, mapped to image file), or CD/DVD-ROM drives (mapped to physical drive or to image file), or both hard drives and CD/DVD-ROM drives;
Up to four serial (COM) ports (mapped to real port, to pipe or to output file);
Up to three bi-directional parallel (LPT) ports (mapped to real port, to printer or to output file);
Ethernet virtual network card compatible with RTL8029;
Generic Parallels Virtual network card;
AC97 compatible sound card;
104-key Windows enhanced keyboard;
PS/2 wheel mouse.

Parallels Workstation technology is supposed to be adapted to any non-standard hardware (for example, the DESKO-keyboard card reader support was implemented).

Parallels Workstation has a set of special tools (utilities and drivers) that enhances the performance and functionality of your guest operating system (mouse synchronization tool, clipboard synchronization tool, etc.). For example, Parallels Workstation for Windows can be customized and optimized in such a way as to be used with the Citrix Metaframe software, thus, allowing you to publish on a Citrix Metaframe server and to remotely run Virtual Machines with different guest operating systems and their applications.