VMware Fusion Vs. Parallels

[Esmandau]

I wanna know who uses one of these 2 softwares and what are the difference you find between each one

[Sophism]

VMWare fusion, used to love parallels but after using fusion its much more stable, faster, and is just overall a better product.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

VMware Fusion. It's faster and better integrated into OS X than Parallels Desktop in my opinion.

[TruckWEB]

Another one for VMware Fusion, even running the latest (2.0) Beta feels better than Parallel. Much better integration with the OS.

I run Windows XP SP2 and Ubuntu 8.04 without any problems.

[Cara Veteran]

Parallels Desktop for Mac user here, I have tried them both and found VMWare to just be slow, clunky, and unstable.

Now if we go Beta to Beta it's a bit closer, Parallels 4 versus VMWare 2 presents a major upgrade to both softwares, however deciding on a product through an unreleased version is never a good idea due to the inherent nature of feature incompleteness. If I had to go one way or the other though? Parallels. They were first on the Mac, they have actually innovated in their product and seen many of their key features copied by VMWare long after release...they are just more inline with the ideals I hold near and dear.

[giga Veteran]

Fusion.

[Emil Valsson]

Parallels, haven't tried Fusion and I see no point in paying another $80 when Parallels works just fine for me! :)

[Virtual Epiphany]

fusion

[CPressland]

VMWare here, but we only had a thread about this a few months ago......

Regardless, I do my best to avoid Windows at all on the Mac

[1759]

VirtualBox user here.

it's free, and if all you're going to be running is XP, which is lightweight as far as OS' go at this point, I don't think the 3 really differ too much, supports Intel/AMD virtualization too. On the downside, it doesn't support network bridging in Leopard, but again, it's free. For Vista, I recommend Fusion, Parallels is quite slow with that.

I've only used it to run a Solaris 10 VM in Leopard, but under Linux, it ran XP SP3 just fine. However, I only use RDC now, as I prefer accessing a real PC, and I can always switch to it, if I want to play games.

[Cadium]

I prefer Parallels Desktop for ease-of-use (I have used it on other Macs, however I don't even run Windows on my MacBook Pro).

[Chad]

I use both quite often. Neither has an advantage over the other, imo.

[azcodemonkey]

Fusion. I tried Parallels, but had problems with it. I've used VMWare Workstation for years to test in different environments, so I trust them completely to support and improve upon what they have.

[Esmandau]

jajaja lol, its must be a joke, but it is real that nobody uses bootcamp? :| WOW ! ! !

[Cara Veteran]

jajaja lol, its must be a joke, but it is real that nobody uses bootcamp? :| WOW ! ! !

Why reboot if you don't have to?

[Simon Veteran]

I use VMWare Fusion most of the time, but when I want to play games I reboot into Boot Camp.

[PaulCabby]

yeah its just inconvenient.

another vote for vmware fusion here

[C_Guy]

Take the step up to Parallels. Love how it integrates the Windows apps on the Dock, runs Windows apps transparently, and integrates Windows apps in Expose. I can even use Mac's Universal Access to zoom on the Windows machine when it's full screen. Huge benefit when I am presenting on the Windows platform. Not sure why anyone would use anything else.

[Boz]

Can any of them do Vista x64?

[giga Veteran]

Can any of them do Vista x64?

Fusion can do 64-bit.

[Cara Veteran]

Fusion can do 64-bit.

Very unstably from my experience. During one week of running Vista 64 through Fusion I had 12 kernal panics and countless BSOD's in Windows, to me it just wasn't worth it. (Running Vista 64 in bootcamp was flawless I might add)

[mmannai]

Vmware Fusion for me! I find it much more speedier than Parallels..

[norseman]

I work at the Hospital for Sick Children here in Toronto. We started off using Parallels as our virtualization software for the mac desktop platform. As soon as we started testing VMWare Fusion we noticed how much better it ran and how stable it was. 64bit was also important to us especially when it came to running statistical programs.

We have not encountered any blue screens of death on any of the macbooks, macbook pros, imacs, mac pros or xserves here. I am not sure what you are doing to cause this but you are probably not alone. We have encountered numerous problems iwth Parallels especially HAL.DLL corruption causing a repair of the operating sysytem if a user decided to move the window around while Parallels was loading.. That should nto realy happy.. only crapware. The discounts we receive in licensiing is also astounding.

We can purchase our copies of VMWare Fusion for $40 a license whereas the "discounted" price for Parallels is $90.

The decision is very easy to make. :)

VMWare has been in the virtualization game for almost a decade, why go with an upstart like Parallels?

Edited July 7, 2008 by dtomilson

[mattmatik]

I use Fusion with XP Professional on my MacBook with 2GB RAM. It works great and haven't had any issues thus far. My favorite way to use Fusion (and I'm sure Parrallels does this as well), is by having my OS X desktop on my 24" widescreen monitor and my XP desktop on my MacBook screen. It provides a seamless integration and more screen space for the XP desktop. To each his own, though :)

[.Neo]

Personally I found Parallels to be one of the worst Mac OS X applications I've ever used. I don't like it's interface and the awkward flip effect, the way it stores virtual machines can be a bit messy and I've seen more than one occasion where they became corrupted because another application supposedly accessed it. Next to that Parallels' performance was disappointing on my iMac.

So far I haven't had any issues with VMware Fusion and I'm looking forward to version 2. Does anyone know when it's supposed to be released?

I have to admit I hardly run Windows, but it's nice to have it laying around just in case.

Edited July 7, 2008 by .Reo