Every other week a variety of colorful, insightful, and friendly people get together on Twitter to talk about Apple Inc related topics. We like to call this bi-weekly meeting of the minds, #AppleChat! Discussed during the past chat was everything under the umbrella of Apple products in education including: barriers Apple may experience, current examples of Apple products in education, and potential future ways products can be integrated into education! The discussion this week really took off with a wide range of insights and opinions from our audience. Want to add your voice to the conversation? We'll be back at it again on Wednesday 2/15/12 at 11am PT! Here is just a sample of the discussion:

WHEN: Every Other Wednesday from 11am-12pm PST.

HOW IT WORKS: Looking to join? Using the hashtag, #APPLECHAT, feel free to share your thoughts or simply follow along! All you have to do is search the hashtag (#AppleChat) on Twitter and you'll be looped into the discussion! Make sure to use the same hashtag when commenting so that others who follow it will see your response! Too much? Follow along using the TwebEvent page instead: http://twebevent.com/applechat

At their recent Guggenheim Museum event, Apple proclaimed that they have some solutions to improve educational quality for students. A bold statement on a grand stage, which was subsequently, backed up with the announcement of iBooks 2 for iPad, and a new textbook category in the iBookstore. As reported by CNET’s Don Reisinger, Apple is attempting to bring down multiple barriers for students with iBooks 2 which is designed to, “solve the major issues hurting today's textbooks--a lack of durability, portability, searchability and interactivity, not to mention outdated content”. Also announced at the event was the new iTunes U which provides students and educators a hub to design, distribute, and experience complete courses featuring audio, video, books, and other content.

Initial results have been positive says Resinger, with Apple selling 350,000 textbooks through the iBookstore within the first 3 days of availability. Will these investments by Apple be another big step in the evolution of education, or simply another high priced fad? Join us to share your thoughts about Apple’s educational efforts and other fun related discussion, Wednesday February 1^st at 11am PT.

Here are a few questions we will discuss in this week’s #AppleChat:

1. Do you think Apple's investment in education will be beneficial in the long run?

2. What products from Apple do you foresee being used for education and how?

3. How can Apple's tech be leveraged to improve the educational experience?

4. Is this a step forward in the evolution of education, or a fad which will pass?

WHEN: Every Other Wednesday from 11am-12pm PST.

HOW IT WORKS: Looking to join? Using the hashtag, #APPLECHAT, feel free to share your thoughts or simply follow along! All you have to do is search the hashtag (#AppleChat) on Twitter and you'll be looped into the discussion! Make sure to use the same hashtag when commenting so that others who follow it will see your response! Too much? Follow along using the TwebEvent page instead: http://twebevent.com/applechat

Our amazing video guest blog comes to us today from David F. Tech enthusiast and YouTube extraordinaire! When he's not on YouTube (dave01568, or Mytechmancave), you can find Dave tweeting and gadgeting away on Twitter at @dave01568.

Have you ever run 6 operating systems on a single computer at one time? Dave has with Parallels Desktop 7! Check out this great video from Dave displaying this amazing feat, along with how to install, start, and use Parallels Desktop 7. Also, stay tuned to the end for a special demo of the Parallels Mobile App on his iPad!

Interested in learning more about Parallels Desktop 7 and the Parallels Mobile App? Check out the recent review by LifeHacker, and guest review of the Parallels Mobile App by Tech Expert Skeeter Harris.

We had another #AppleChat, and as per usual enjoyed ourselves like you can't believe! This time we were not only able to chat about Apple in the Enterprise, but we were also able to thank two of our amazing chatters for hanging out with us! Congratulations to Dave who won a copy of Parallels Desktop 7, and to Michael who won a pass to the upcoming MacIT Conference (1/26 - 1/28 in San Francisco, CA). We'll be at it again on Wednesday, 2/1/12 at 11am PT! Here is a sample of what was discussed:

If you didn't win a pass to the MacIT Conference during #AppleChat and are looking to go, don't fret we're giving away two more passes! To enter, you can simply RETWEET the following: 

RT @ParallelsMac: Looking to visit the #MacIT2012 conference? RT to enter to win one of two passes! http://ow.ly/8BacK

Each retweet counts as one entry, and we will be tweeting out additional retweetable tweets throughout this weekend! Entries close on 1/23/12 at 11:59am PT so keep an eye on @ParallelsMac and retweet to increase your chances of winning!

An independent Microsoft Sharepoint consultant, developer, and amateur kite boarder, Phil Harding, is the voice behind tech blog More Soma Please. Learn why after testing both Parallels Desktop 7 and VMware Fusion 4, he now uses Parallels Desktop 7. Feel free to find him on Twitter at @phillipharding.

I’ve used VMware Fusion every day for the last 4 years right from version 2.0.1, for developing on the Microsoft platform, and most especially with SharePoint. It has been rock solid, reliable and dependable without question, and with each passing upgrade things only got better – slicker UIs, new and improved features, faster performance etc etc. Initially, after eagerly upgrading to version 4, everything was going well. Though after a while the problems started. 

I got to a point were I could not use it as a development platform for my day to day work – I need consistency, reliability and most importantly dependability, and so I reluctantly looked at the alternatives, which brought me to Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac.

In short:

- The performance hype wasn’t hype, I don’t know how they do it, but running a Windows guest VM loaded with my SP2010 development stack is freakin’ fast, not just fast it’s so close to a bare metal setup you wouldn’t know the difference.

- Parallels Desktop 7 has an adaptive Hypervisor which you can configure to switch resources to and from the VM depending on whether your VM or a host app is active.

- Suspend and restore isn’t particularly fast, but is perfectly acceptable and seems consistent.

- Taking and restoring snapshots again, isn’t particularly fast but perfectly acceptable and seems consistent.

- Pausing a running VM is a provided feature.

- After suspending a VM, the Memory monitor on the Mac informs me that all memory has been returned back to the Mac.

- Shutting the Mac down immediately after a VM suspend works as expected.

- Parallels has a nice feature whereby, having created a VM, once you get it to a nice point, you can create a VM Template out of it, after which you can use that template to create new VMs out of.

Make sure and check out my full article for my full findings comparing VMware Fusion 4.1 to Parallels Desktop 7, and an interesting read! As my trial period comes to and end, I’ll be buying a licence for Parallels Desktop 7, and would like to leave you with one thought from my post: The performance really is eye-opening!