Parallels Desktop ready for Leopard at last

Five weeks after the launch of Leopard, the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system, Parallels announced on Friday that it has a version of its virtualisation software ready to run on the operating system.

Leopard was demoed in detail by Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, at his company's Worldwide Developers Conference in June. 

But it wasn't until October that Parallels, a Mac virtualisation specialist, said it would release a version of its software for Leopard. Talking at that time, Ben Rudolph, communications director for SWsoft, Parallels' holding company, said there were a few issues to be fixed with the product, Parallels Desktop for Mac. These issues "need to be resolved, but that can be done in a couple of weeks", Rudolph said at the time.

Parallels also announced on Friday a premium edition of Parallels Desktop for Mac that includes three extra pieces of software.

The first piece of software, Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0, offers protection against malware, such as viruses, spyware and spam, that can damage a virtualised Windows machine running on a Mac. The other two — backup software and disk-management software — are manufactured by Acronis. The premium edition costs £59.99.