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Sounds Good

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 8, 2007
1,692
57
Parallels has Coherence. VMWare has Unity.


For those of you that have used BOTH, could you please tell us which one you like better, and why you prefer it?

Thanks... :)


EDIT: Oh, one more thing... which is easier (overall) for a total Mac newbie - Parallels or VMWare?
 

netdog

macrumors 603
Feb 6, 2006
5,760
38
London
I personally have no compelling reason to switch to VMWare at this point nor to upgrade to Parallels 3.0 at this point.

If I were buying one for the first time, however, I would go with VMWare, not because of your question about Coherence vs. Unity (though Unity is very good), but because of their relationship with Intel.

Of course, Parallels could pull something out of their hat, so I will just remain on the sidelines using Parallels 2, which is fabulous. As for Coherence, it is perfectly adequate.
 

johny5

macrumors 6502a
Mar 31, 2007
751
11
UK
Ive used parallels 3 for some time now mainly for office apps at work. Just installed vmware yesterday to have a play and it seems to be a lot quicker than parallels at both booting (because its an image as oppose to a bootcamp partition - although I cant get vmware working with my bootcamp partition as it crashes on boot - I think its because parallels has drivers scattered on it!) and the general speed of the apps.

VMware seems to integrate with the hardware better than Parallels even on simple (silly) things like scrolling an email up and down in M$ outlook. In Parallels the screen tears like a vertical line down the middle of the screen whereas in VMware the scrolling up and down is smooth.

Unity works a lot better also as it feels more like mac app windows floating around your desktop instead of M$ windows bolted on.

on the down side tho, my vmware experience seems to include a fair few pauses or crashes as I tried some installs using images (across the network) instead of cd's but this may be cured in later releases?
 

SDDave2007

macrumors regular
Apr 12, 2007
197
1
I have been using Parallels v3 on a MacPro in Coherence mode for about a month now.. The Parallels Tranporter utility make a perfect clone of my existing PC into a Parallels VM with just a few mouse-clicks. and so far everything runs flawlessly, including special VPN security software, and terminal emulators I use to log into remote mainframes for work. The only way I know I'm NOT on a PC is the fact the OSX dock is still there... Put Parallels into FULL SCREEN mode, and its 100% transparent. I love it.
 

brkirch

macrumors regular
Oct 18, 2001
191
1
From my experience Coherence is far more practical. Unity does not provide very much configurability and so there is no easy way to enable the taskbar (which is required to use some programs). Also Unity has issues with overlapping windows (they often don't display correctly in Exposé), and can glitch up so much that the VM locks up and you need to switch back to windowed mode to unlock it. Also Unity does not provide complete drag and drop support or the ability to open documents directly from OS X in Windows applications. Unity does provide the ability to minimize windows into the OS X dock and has Exposé support (although a bit buggy), Coherence has neither of those abilities.

Oh, one more thing... which is easier (overall) for a total Mac newbie - Parallels or VMWare?

I wouldn't say either program is particularly easier or more difficult to use than the other. Just try both and see which one you prefer.
 

Sounds Good

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 8, 2007
1,692
57
Unity does provide the ability to minimize windows into the OS X dock and has Exposé support (although a bit buggy), Coherence has neither of those abilities.
Do you figure Parallels will add these abilities?
 

BornAgainMac

macrumors 604
Feb 4, 2004
7,337
5,355
Florida Resident
Question

When I go to the Parallels website to learn more about their product, you can clearly see they promote it. I can see at a glance the new features and screenshots and more information. When I go to VMWare's website, it is almost like they hide the fact that they have a Mac version of their product. I would never have known about Unity if I didn't read about it from these forums. They treat their Mac product like some big secret. Why is this?
 

gorillapond

macrumors newbie
Jan 6, 2004
9
0
When I go to the Parallels website to learn more about their product, you can clearly see they promote it. I can see at a glance the new features and screenshots and more information. When I go to VMWare's website, it is almost like they hide the fact that they have a Mac version of their product. I would never have known about Unity if I didn't read about it from these forums. They treat their Mac product like some big secret. Why is this?

It's probably that VMware Fusion is still in Beta. Once it goes 1.0 they will probably push it more.

VMware Fusion: $50 per computer
VMware ESX Server and VirtualCenter: $3000+ per server PLUS yearly maintenance fees for support and upgrades.

VMware ESX has training, certification and a large community behind it like Macrumors is for Apple. Fusion is just a small part of what VMware does.

I prefer VMware, because I've been working with it for so long and they have much more experience working with virtualization. VMware Fusion shares the core their other products, plus some OS X integration features.
 

phuong

macrumors 6502a
Aug 16, 2006
523
0
Unity got good intergration with Expose, but according to Parallels team, it's simple to implement: just put the Windows' window into a Mac holder (a Mac window) and then voila, Expose just works. in my experience though, this feature is still a bit buggy, like redraw, for instance, sometimes takes 1 seconds to refresh, or windows still overlap etc.

Coherence is nice in the sense that it offers a lot of configurability features, so i can make the program behave the way i want. for example, i dont need Windows apps to show up in OSX dock, so i want to turn this off. under Unity, there's no way i can do this.
in RC1 release, i now can choose to have Windows taskbar visible (which is the reason i start thinking to switch) however, it doesn't always work in a dual/multiple monitor system. it lose mouse focus all the time. at first i thought it crashed but this happens more and more so i looked into it and found out that there's something to do with resolution, so there's a mis-alignment between where i think i click and where the VM instructs the mouse to click (VMware admit that they haven't solved this). this is very annoying sometimes.

last point, is running fusion/parallels on a laptop. there are quite many people having problems with their laptops not being able to sleep. although it is not clear as who or what causes it, but all those people including me use Parallels. Parallels team said that they were able to recreate the situation and concluded that it is because of a problem with RAM - but many people still got it even after they have changed RAM.

so for now while Fusion is still free and i already own PD, i'll just sit aside and watch, see what's happening when Fusion 1.0 is released. maybe it's not as good as it is promised, just like PD3.0

my 0.02
 

phuong

macrumors 6502a
Aug 16, 2006
523
0
Then why do you suppose they haven't done it already?

And when do you suppose they will?

you tell me!
i'm not them, how would i know.

Andrew, Parallels forum admin said
From what I saw in this video the technology behind Unity is exactly the same which Parallels uses in Coherence. They just stepped a bit farther in visual side of it - showing Windows applications in separate Mac windows (and consequently support Expose, drop shadows, zero dragging artifacts and so on). All other stuff is shipped with Parallels 2.5 long ago - Windows applications in Dock, Application menu, Windows Start menu, search Windows application (in Parallels you can use Spotlight!) and so on.
 

SDDave2007

macrumors regular
Apr 12, 2007
197
1
One thing that you need to remember... for SWSoft.. Parallels is a major product... for VMWare.. supporting the Mac is small potatoes... very small.

VMWare makes it money [and has for a number of years now], by providing Virtualization Software for much larger installations.

For example.. right now every employee where I work [and we have 85 offices in the US] has a XP box on their desk, and most applications such as Word, Excel etc are handled by a Citrix Server... but the software still runs on your desktop.

Over the next year or so, we are installing VMWare in who knows how many AIX Servers... when thats done, each PC will effectively connect to a VM running on a server in some other state... and there will be effectively NO software [application/data wise] stored locally.
 

user13

macrumors regular
Dec 22, 2006
191
0
When I go to the Parallels website to learn more about their product, you can clearly see they promote it. I can see at a glance the new features and screenshots and more information. When I go to VMWare's website, it is almost like they hide the fact that they have a Mac version of their product.
BTW, Parallels have improved their site appearance (yesterday, or even earlier - I don't visit their site often now). There's a pretty girl sitting with a Mac now:) www.parallels.com
One thing that you need to remember... for SWSoft.. Parallels is a major product... for VMWare.. supporting the Mac is small potatoes... very small.
Parallels are 100% orientated to work with Macs, they don't have important products for different systems. That's why Parallels is a bit more optimized for work on Macs (especially for running Windows)
 

phuong

macrumors 6502a
Aug 16, 2006
523
0
One thing that you need to remember... for SWSoft.. Parallels is a major product... for VMWare.. supporting the Mac is small potatoes... very small.
You know what? This is a really good point.

you're talking like people do business for fun. when the fun's over, they just stop doing it, close down the sector? boy it ain't that simple.

just because vmware offers so many products/services doesn't mean Fusion is any less important to them than those products/services.
same thing for Parallels. what make you think Parallels is so important to SWsoft than their other products?
 
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