This weekend Parallels released the latest update to Parallels Desktop for Mac, beta build 3036, and significantly raised the bar for anyone looking to follow in their footsteps ( VMWare ? ).

Build 3036 adds a long list of updates to an already capable product including a couple of real killer features, Coherency mode and the ability to run your Boot Camp install of OS X within a VM session.

Coherency mode is hard to explain but in a nutshell when you start a Windows session and select the option to switch on Coherency mode Windows is run full screen but the Windows desktop becomes invisible and only your running apps are shown which results in them appearing to be running on the OS X desktop. This then means you can display OS X apps right next to Windows apps completely transparently and better yet, cut and paste between them. For anyone like myself who has worked with Parallels extensively and learned to flip between environments this is an amazing development and truly brings the Intel Mac to another level ( at least if you have a need to run Windows ). This feature alone justifies the price of Parallels which makes it even more amazing when you understand that this will be available in the next full release of Parallels for no cost to existing Parallels users.

The other major feature is something I havent yet tried myself ( having deleted my Boot Camp install some time ago ). If you have used Parallels for any time and have no need for accelerated graphics ( gaming etc ) then you may well have taken the same decision and realised that retaining a chunk of disk space for a Boot Camp partition is really not necessary, Parallels really is THAT good. However for some Boot Camp is a desired option, but this then means that if you want to run Windows within OS X through Parallels you effectively have to give up hard disc space to Windows twice, which is clearly frustrating. ( It also means you have to apply Windows service packs, anti virus updates, hotfixes etc etc to two seperate OS installs ).

The latest update to Parallels apparently does away with this by allowing you to use your Boot Camp install as a VM within OS X. This is impressive stuff if it works as it means you can have one install of Windows on your Intel Mac that does both jobs.

As soon as I have had chance to try this I will post my thoughts and findings. All in all, if you have an Intel Mac and ANY need at all to run Windows Parallels is quickly becoming an essential addition, and even if you dont need it I would recommend it if only as a way to convince your Windows using friends that there really is a viable alternative to Microsoft and that switching can be eased considerably.