Whilst there are a plethora of free alternatives for Windows and Linux to run virtual machines there are very good reasons that Parallels is not free. Time is a scarce commodity, Parallels buys you some back.Integration into the MAC OS desktop experience is quite simply amazing, and so intuitive. One downside of moving from Windows to MAC OS was some of the MS Office suite not being available on MAC.Now I am getting silent performance from my M1 MAC mini running the same applications that had my fan screaming on my Windows (Intel) desktop. That's not all, it is seamless, go to the dock, open Visio and Parallels in a few seconds boots WIndows 11 (arm version) and starts Visio, opening the file as well if I select the "open with" option through Finder.
