Web Worker Daily

From The Apple Blog:

Virtualization software has come a long way since the days of Virtual PC on PPC Macs. Microsoft’s Windows-enabling program was more of a parlor trick than fully functional software. These days, Parallels Desktop version 4.0, available today for purchase, makes running a virtual machine more of a pleasure and less of a chore.

Earlier this fall, VMWare Fusion, the primary competitor of Parallels, released version 2.0 of their software. VMWare’s updated product added DirectX 9.0c and Mac OS X Leopard Server support, features which gave it a significant edge over the 3.0 release of Parallels. Parallels Desktop 4.0 evens the field, introducing both DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 support, and the ability to run OS X Leopard Server.

Read about the rest of Parallel 4’s new features, as well as a head-to-head comparison of the new Parallels vs. Fusion 2.

Personally, I’ve been happy with VMWare Fusion 2…is it worth taking a look at Parallels 4?

Like Mike, I’ve been using the alpha releases of OmniFocus for a while now and I was thisclose to taking advantage of their pre-sale deal to buy the application for $40. But wait. CulturedCode has thrown their hat into the ring with Things. Yet another stand-alone and pretty GTD app for Mac OS X? Maybe.

A preview version is trickling out to newsletter subscribers. For those who can’t wait, the developers are promoting a screencast of the application’s main features. Looks promising. Much of the same functionality as OmniFocus, including a quick entry window for doing a brain dump of tasks to process later. But Things doesn’t force a project/context/task structure the way OmniFocus and other GTD-focused apps do.

So now I’ll wait to get my preview invite before deciding which application I’ll end up paying for. As with email, I’ve found that I prefer using a stand-alone application for task management instead of a browser-based one.

Are you already overloaded on to-do apps or are you giving these newbies a try?