For all the Mac Geeks, it seems from some of the reviews I've read that VMWare Fusion is a better option than Parallels for running Windows on Leopard. Do you agree? Why?
It's poorly written, poorly supported, and has a fabulous habit of causing kernel panics due to the aforementioned poorly-written portions. Oh, and if you have already installed the Parallels trial, be aware it charmingly eats your Applications folder preferences when you uninstall it. (Take that for not buying me!)
VMWare Fusion is faster, much more stable, more featureful, and $20 cheaper. Do you really need more motivation?
I haven't tried the latest version of Fusion but did run the previous one. The fact that I use an external mouse, bluetooth keyboard and a tablet with my MBP confused the crap out of it rendering it basically unusable. I believe that you can download a trial.
Used both, but I settled on Fusion. Much better performance, especially on the video side of things.
Of course, the best option if you don't need both systems running at the same time is Bootcamp.
Does anyone know if you're already running Parallels, how hard is it to switch to VM Fusion or Bootcamp. Can either use the existing Windows installation or do you have to reinstall and go through the whole update process again?
Frag - fusion can import your Parallels disk image and convert it. I know that you can build a Parallels image from a bootcamp partition but I don't think that you can do it the other way around. It doesn't make sense, IMO, for a company to spend development dollars on technology that makes it easier to abandon their product.
Running Windows XP in Parallels 3.0 on my MacBook Pro, with 1GB RAM allocated. Runs perfectly. I use it for MS Access database development, plus run various Astro Imaging programs with multiple USB devices attached. At times I have 2 USB imaging devices attached to Windows and 2 attached to OS X, all running simultaneously. What can I say - no problems. I guess I feel a bit cheated that I didn't get the sack of **** that the others did!
I have Fusion, Parallels and BootCamp. Fusion seems to be a bit more stable than Parallels and will allow me to use up to 2Gb of RAM (Parallels only 1Gb although it should enable more). I can start either virtual machine. I never tried both at once although, sincee I am running two XP installs, it should work.
If you load a full complement of programs into XP using Parallels and Boot Camp then you don't have to do everything over again for Fusion and Boot Camp since either one will select XP through BootCamp.
Mac did tell me that they do not support BootCamp for Tiger anymore so if you have to reload the BootCamp partition (and I do) you will have to upgrade to Leopard (unless you are running it now).
Interestingly you don't have to use BootCamp to get to either virtual machine but if you don't then you will be booting to a different XP installation and will have to load all your programs twice.
Parallels (version 3) lets me scroll the window of my 30" Cinema to display a double size area. VM will only display 1 screen on one monitor. But since Parallels only has 64Mb of virtual VRAM, although I can drag the display over 2 monitors, it really slows down so much that it is useless for two monitors.
I really don't bother with, native, BootCamp since both virtual machines work well enough-Now. If this sounds like a tricky bit of computer sleight of hand-it is. Consider that you will want your printers, USB and DVD to work on the VM and Mac side. So plan to spend a bit for some Guru/IT time as well as a license for the VM or Parallels software and a copy of XP (don't even consider VISTA!).
