VMWare Fusion vs Parallels

April 18, 2008 | Tags: OSX, Software

Apple One of the reasons I was able to switch back to a Mac was because of these two programs. Parallels and VMWare Fusion allow you to run Windows inside your Mac, just like it's a regular application. Because of work, I have to run a Windows environment since my company's software doesn't support Mac OSX.

I downloaded Parallels first and installed it. It ran fine, from what I could tell. It retails for $79 so I decided to try out VMWare's Fusion, which retails for the same price but came with a $15 rebate. I figured "what the heck, virtual hosting software is virtual hosting software". Boy was I wrong.

After using VMWare Fusion for a month, it was noticeably sluggish when I was running resource hungry applications in Windows. It got so sluggish that I dismissed virtual hosting software as even being practical for my needs. I couldn't run a command and wait 30 seconds while I was giving a demo to a customer.

So in a last ditch effort, I decided to try Parallels again. It is amazing how much faster Parallels is than VMWare Fusion. Under load in Windows, Parallels is running at near native speed. I couldn't be happier spending the $79 for Parallels. For VMWare, I wish I had it back.

4/29/08 Update: I have been running Parallels pretty much every day now. I have to say, I am in love with it! Windows XP has practically native speed, it's fast, it doesn't blue screen; heck, one might even argue it's more stable under Parallels than it is on native hardware. And I'm not by any means using it for lightweight tasks. I'm stressing XP with plenty of disk IO and CPU intensive jobs, and it's performing extremely well. I can even play iTunes and my songs don't miss a beat. VMWare definitely has some catching up to do. Their performance isn't even close to Parallels. Regarding hardware, I have a MBP 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, running Leopard.

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