Vmware versus Parallels

[ZeroHour]

Taking into account vmwares recent performance patch if possible, which is better and reasons why?

Need to get a little windows action going to see how it runs.

 

Cheers

[HodgeHi]

Download the trials of each and see which one you like best. Don't forget VirtualBox

 

Also you can use Boot Camp.

[john]

I'm very happy with Bootcamp on my Macbook does the job fine and it was free

[Arthur]

I have Fusion 3.1 & Parallels 5 and both are good (and bad) at different things. I would definitely download the demos and try them out to see which one you like the best. If you intend to connect USB devices to your VMs, then I wouldn't bother with VirtualBox at all - it's also missing key features like drag-and-drop between the host and guest (among other things). It seems you do get what you pay for. Parallels seems to have the edge when it comes to 3D graphics performance - particularly OpenGL which is used for the cool effects in Ubuntu.

 

Overall I would say I prefer VMware Fusion to Parallels. It is extremely stable, easier to use, I can transfer the VMs over to my PC to use with VMware Workstation 7 and the recent update has improved the speed considerably. Also, if it wasn't for the recent MacUpdate bundle I would never have bought Parallels since I've found their customer service is dreadful in the past and the previous version (v4.0) was really buggy.

 

You may find the links below quite interesting too...

 

Fusion 3: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/11/vmware-fusion-3-review.ars

Parallels 5: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/11/parallels-desktop-5-review.ars

MacWorld Comparison: http://www.macworld.com/article/145613/2010/01/choosevmapp.html

Edited June 9, 2010 by Arthur

[TomH]

VMware for me... although parallels often comes out as having better performance where graphics are concerned.