About.com has released the winners of its Readers’ Choice Awards for 2012, and for the second year running Parallels Desktop for Mac has taken home honors in the “Best Application for Running Windows” category. A landslide victory, Parallels garnered 72 percent of the votes, with the closest competitor receiving only 15 percent.
“Winning this award is a huge honor because it is a validation of our commitment to building products that delight out customers,” said Kim Johnston, vice president of marketing for the Desktop Virtualization and Mac division at Parallels, in a statement. “We take great pride in innovating and delivering products that address our customer’s needs, whether they are a small business or enterprise, student or developer. It is great to see that the work we have done has been so well received.”
In other recent developments, Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac was updated to provide experimental support for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview , including simple download and automatic installation of Windows 8 via the Parallels New Virtual Machine Wizard. The update also adds experimental support for OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview as both a host and guest. Now Mac enthusiasts and developers can safely try Windows 8 Consumer Preview and OS X Mountain Lion in Parallels Desktop 7 virtual machines to protect their Mac from potential mishaps or corruption of important files that can occur with preview versions of software.
All of these features are also available to customers on-the-go. With the Parallels Mobile app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, you can remotely access and control both your Mac and Windows applications, and files, from anywhere. Its features include audio support for Flash and the ability to copy and paste text between Windows programs on Mac and your Apple mobile devices. Parallels Mobile is available in the iTunes App Store, and even works on the iPad 3.
Parallels has also created Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac Enterprise Edition to make it fast, simple and cost-effective for users to implement Macs in the enterprise. The Enterprise Edition empowers businesses and IT departments to support Windows based business applications for Mac users with a configurable, policy-compliant solution that easily fits into existing business processes and helps reduce the cost of deploying and maintaining client-based software.
Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac is available now with a standard retail price of US$79.99 and a student edition is available for $39.99. Parallels Desktop 7 Switch to Mac Edition is $99.99. The Parallels Mobile app is available in the iTunes App Store for a limited time promotional price of $4.99; the standard retail price is $19.99.
Source: Parallels