Parallels Vs VMware Fusion
- 4
- Add a Comment
Parallels owns this space right now, no doubt - Windows virtualization on the Intel Mac platform. Despite its heavy branding, Parallels has yet to prove its worth in performance (and has, up until recently, been the only viable commercial virtual machine contender on Apple’s OS X). I had been taking a tentative look at Vmware Fusion, only after raving about Vmware Workstation solving my Vista woes with an XP VM.
More people are discovering Vmware Fusion now. Scott Beale, with Unparalleled Windows Virtualization:
I just installed VMware Fusion 1.0, a new desktop virtualization program that allows you to seamlessly run multiple operation systems on your Intel-based Mac. I setup a virtual machine for Windows Vista on my Mac Pro. The whole process was super easy and took only a few minutes, in fact for me it was much faster than installing Windows on a PC. So far everything works really well and I like it as much, if not more than Parallels Desktop for Mac (another great virtualization program).
And he points to Paul, who starts by pointing out why Vmware is pwning the performance game:
Fusion was built from the ground up in OS X’s native programming environment, Cocoa, and as such Fusion benefits from speed increases and lower memory overhead. Fusion puts less strain on your computer than any other virtualization product at this point. The use of Cocoa in development gives Fusion a more native Mac application feel with customizable toolbars.
Wither Parallels? Well, I wasn’t set up for a true side-by-side last night, but I did at least want to tell people that there’s a new VM in town - and it’s already giving Parallels a beating:
Aero is still missing, as well as the ability to dump a Windows VM into a new Boot Camp partition, but the idea of “switching” is finally worth seriously considering for those of us dyed-in-the-wool Windows users.
Tags: parallels, virtual machine, vmware
4 Comments
gary carlson
August 17th, 2007
at 3:17pm
check out www.jumpbox.com if you’re interested in virtualization. their virtual appliances are top notch. it will be interesting to see what happens with them as the whole virtualization movement takes shape now that VMWare has gone public and Xensource has been bought by Citrix.
Sid Gilbert
August 20th, 2007
at 10:58am
Chris,
I subscribe to several of your newsletters, and I have noticed that the content seems to be getting more and more mixed up, in my opinion. The article on running virtual machines on Mac might have been best left to the Mac newsletter, the recent IT newsletter focus on Ubuntu may be better off in the Linux fanatics newsletter, etc. One of the huge advantages of having multiple newsletters for your subscribers is our ability to pick and choose the subject matter we are interested in reading about. I know, the article was about running Windows in a Mac environment, but still it seems to be a trend lately that is growing. I love the newsletters you put out, but I can’t count on the content anymore. My time, like yours, is valuable and I need to make every moment spent reading newsletters count. Thanks for hearing me out.
Sean Tierney
August 21st, 2007
at 5:21pm
Gary- thanks for the mention. We’re definitely excited to see virtualization getting some mainstream attention given those developments last week and have high hopes that both technical and non-technical people will find JumpBox useful for getting open source apps running quickly.
Chris- for me the multiple snapshot feature in Parallels is still a killer feature that Fusion is missing. No doubt that is on their roadmap but right now the minor performance advantage of Fusion is trumped by the ability to branch a VM indefinitely and “grow and revert different mutations.” More here-> http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2007/07/17/multiple-snapshots-in-parallels-3/
Sid- where is the line here once you introduce virtualization?? I’d say this topic is perfectly on point.
For anyone who wants to try one of the JumpBox apps Gary mentioned:
http://www.jumpbox.com/jumpbox-applications
Unencumbered usage at no charge as long as you don’t need the premium features…
sean
Acehydro06
February 18th, 2008
at 9:32am
Love your show Chris!