Fusion VS Parallels

[raymondu999]

Hey all...

Despite having been out of the windows loop for about 7 years now, I have come upon the day I have dreaded. By end of this week, I would have had to install Windows. I will be doing mainly some coding (the IDE can't be chosen... they want me to use a specific IDE, and it has no Mac version). So I'm choosing the virtualization route. Between VMware and Parallels, which one do you guys prefer? Thanks.

 

[raymondu999]

whoa... only 3 votes so far? And all 3 for VMware? I guess VMware it is anyways, then.

 

[mobilehaathi]

Check out VirtualBox with the guest additions before you drop $$$ on either of those.

 

[raymondu999]

Yeah actually, but then I saw it's open-source, and it's free, and it's quite small... and, I ashamedly admit that this put a bit of a worry in my mind. Anyone have VirtualBox experience?

 

[mobilehaathi]

Well I have no idea why those things would put you off of it.....those exact points are what turn many many many people on to a piece of software.

I use it for virtualizing my Linux install and it works wonders (in fact it is more feature complete for Linux vs Parallels I feel).

It is free. What could you possible have to lose? Try it out, create your Windows machine, and install guest additions. Since all you're doing is coding in a particular IDE, it more than satisfies your needs.

If you still feel the need to throw away $80, by all means do so.

 

[fiercetiger224]

I vote VMware Fusion. Why? Simple. Stability.

I've been running VMware fusion for about a half a year now, and it's much more stable than Parallels.

I used Parallels 2.0, then 3.0, and both were slow, and would give me kernel panics sometimes on my Macbook. Then, I looked to Fusion. Used it, and it gave me no problems at all. Haven't had a single crash. Nada. Keep in mind that I was running this on a 1st gen Macbook with 2GB RAM.

When I got my Mac Pro, I tested both Parallels and Fusion. Again, Parallels would slow down my machine for some reason, where Fusion kept OS X performance the same. At first, I had 6GB RAM, now I have 14GB. So I can run several virtual machines now without any kind of slowdown, with lots of other apps (such as Adobe CS3, Final Cut, etc) running alongside.

I decided on sticking with Fusion because of VMware's long, proven virtualization solutions.

 

[Neil321]

This as this type of poll/thread discussion has been done before, i don't want rain on your parade OP but Fusion always seems to come out on top

My three reasons for Fusion Stability,Reliability,Support

Edit, OP if i was you i'd make sure i had Fusion running off of my windows partition that way you will always have the advantage of being able to run windows at native speed should you need it

AFAIK this is something VirtualBox cannot do