Parallels 3.0 RC announced

If Windows is the new Classic, then Parallels Desktop for Mac is the Classic Enabler of the new millennium; there's no easier way to get XP running on your Intel Mac, should you wish to do something as antithetical to the Macintosh way as that. Virtualization heavyweight VMware has been sneaking up, though, releasing early betas including preliminary 3D support. Now Team Orange is leaping back to the front of the pack with a release candidate announcement for version 3.0 and upgrade pricing ($40 before June 7, $50 after that).

New features in v3 of PD include:

• SmartSelect -- set your preferred application handlers cross-platform. Want to open URLs in IE7, mailto: links in Mail.app, or .xls files in Excel 2007? You can now.

• 3D acceleration -- DirectX and OpenGL support will allow 3D gamers to play Windows games at some modicum of acceptable speed

• Snapshot -- back up or roll back your virtual machine

• Parallels Explorer -- copy files into or out of your virtual disk images or your Boot Camp partition

• Enhanced Boot Camp support, better USB, better printer sharing, shiny Coherence 2.0

So far the RC is not downloadable outside the beta program, but I imagine as soon as it is, we'll all overload Parallels' servers like we usually do.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in