The Official Parallels Virtualization Blog has produced a number of excellent “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” spoof ads. Titled Coexist with Parallels, the four ads show what good things can happen when Mac’s and PC’s live together - on a Mac of course!

Treehugger has a great article on Virtualization and the positive affect it could have on reducing energy consumption. I had never considered this before, but when I am running Parallels to test my sites in IE, I am not using a second physical PC, but instead a virtual one. A year ago, I would have had both my Mac and PC fired up all day!

On a related note, if you are interested in global warming, carbon emissions and the green movement in general, the Treehugger blog site is an excellent resource.

The latest version of Parallels is now out of beta and available for download. There are some great new features in this version and is definitely worth the free upgrade! If you don’t already own Parallels, it is fantastic software that is worth a purchase.

Here is a quick little screencast I prepared that shows how the just released Parallels Desktop RC2 coherence mode just got way better. In a nutshell, a couple of small tweaks gets rid of that nasty old Windows Taskbar. Clicking on the Parallels dock icon opens up the Start Menu.

Imran Nazar got tired of dual booting his Gentoo Linux with Windows XP, so he figured out a cleaver way to Run a Windows Partition in VMware using an existing Window installation on a native disk partition.

Microsoft is feeling charitable? They recently announced that anyone can have IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine through an offer that allows you to download a free Virtual PC image of Windows XP with IE6. Microsoft Virtual PC is free virtualization software that allows you to run multiple Operating Systems (Windows, Linux or Unix) while in Windows XP. This looks to be a great option for cross-browser testing!

An important Parallels announcement made today reveals that Parallels can now boot Windows from a BootCamp partition! You can get into the beta testing by downloading the Parallels Desktop for Mac Beta Build 3036. Parallels Desktop is a virtualization product that enabls Intel-based Mac owners to install and use Microsoft Windows without the need to reboot the system.

Virtualization Daily has posted a nice tutorial on How to convert a VMWare virtual appliance to work with Parallels. There are hundreds of VMWare Virtual Appliances and unfortunately without this tutorial, there is no way to run them on Parallels for OSX. Virtualization Daily has also coverted a few of these appliances for you and have made the available on their site.